The Council Bluffs nonpareil. [volume] (Council Bluffs [Iowa]) 1857-1867, 1860-12-01
PERSONAL LIBERTY BILLS.

Mach is said By Northern Doughface
journals and orators, about the Personal
Liberty Bills, passed by several of the
Northern States, for the purpose Of prevent.
ing the execution Of the Fugitive Slave
law. They aeligh. to call the passage of these
bills, s'infractious upon the Constitution"
They are never tired of harping upon these
bills, and of declaring that by the passage
Of the same, the offending States were 40
guilty Of Notification, as South Carolinians
are now in attempting,to nullify the revenue
laws Admit it, then what? Then, in
that case, why do not the Doughface jour-
mails of the North attempt to "square &C.
counts,'' by bestowipg as much depreciation
and utilization upon the people of South
Carolina as upon the people Of Massachusetts
and other Northern States? Will some
Northern Doughface Journal give us little
information on this point; not only that, but
set its neighbor an example, by pitching in
to the '.personal Liberty Bills of the South?
In regard to the matter..of ''infractions upon
the Constitution" how stands the account
between the North and South? The st.
Louis Democrat answers that question salts
factorily to US, so We appendits answer, and
ask the attention of all railers against North
ern ePersonal Liberty Bill s." thereto:
(which section has more offended against
the Constitution, which says that the citizens
Of each State shall be entitled to all privi-
leges and immunities of citizens Of theisev-
eraI States? Have not citizens of the Free
States been prosecuted, robbed, lynched,
expelled, or hanged in many of the Slaves
States? The atrocities in Texas are still
fresh in the public recollection, and some of
them are too shocking to relate. Ministers
of the gospel, teachers, governesses, arti-
sans commercial travellers, peddIers, Yam
KEGS, Irshmen and Germans have been tar
red and feathcred, scourged and driven out,
hanged, and burned at the stake by rufian
mobs in the Slave State, on bare suspicion.
or on the testimony of negroes. The Amer
leans citizen from Free State who finds
himself in South Carolina, Georgia or Tex
as, has no safeguard in the Constitution Of his
country. IL is dead letter as far as be in
dlviduaiy is concerned. He may CRY out
under the scou' &c. | am an American citi-
zen, but it will not reduce tho number of
his stripes. Neither can be obtain the slight
est redress. Systematic outrage of this ma
ture by Southern mobs is the principle cause
of the opposition evinced By some Of the
Northern States to the Fugitive Slave law.
What a sorry figure South Carolina cuts in
making complaints of the North, when she
has the audacity to put colored citizens Of
Massachusetts in irons, who happen to come
into Charleston in the Northern vessels !?
We say that all laws should be enforced
that even the Fugisive Slave law should be
enforced to the letter, but nevertheless we
say that the South should pluck the beam
out of its own eye before it points at the
mote in the eye of its brother. Areihsre no
rights but the rights Of slav eholders2 Git
liens from the Free States residing in or
travelling through the Slave States have
been robbed not only Of their constitutional
but Of their natural rights robbed not only
of the right of domicile and transit, bu. Of
their property. their freedom, and their
lives.
II the thing be at all practicable, let new
guarantees be interchanged for maintaining
the inviolability Of the Constitution in every
one of the thirty three States but If il be
not practicable, let the complaining Southern
States come before the national tribunal
with clean hands; let them secure to North
ern and foreign citizens within their
Jurisdiction the common rights conferred By
the Constitution Of the United States, or at
once abandon the role Of injured innocence,
and cease their clamors about the violation
Of the Fugitive Slave law.
cTConsress meets next Monday, and the
Presidents Message viii probably rs~h here