Part 5

“I was informed that three slaves were at Bloodgood’s Hotel, who wished to assert their right to freedom; I went to the hotel, and saw a yellow boy on the steps fronting on Walnut Street; I made inquiry of him, and he stated that such was the case, but referred me up stairs to one of the waiters for further information; the latter informed me that the slaves, with their master, had just gone on board the steamboat at the end of Walnut Street wharf, for the purpose of going to New York in the five o’clock line. I went on board the boat, looked through the cabin, and then went up on the promenade deck; I saw that man” (_pointing to Mr. Wheeler_) “sitting sideways on the bench on the farther side; Jane was sitting next to and three or four feet from him; the two children were sitting close to her. I approached her and said, ‘You are the person I am looking for, I presume’; Wheeler turned towards me and asked what I wanted with him; I replied, Nothing, that my business was entirely with this woman; he said, ‘She is my slave, and anything you have to say to her you can say to me.’ _I then said to her, ‘You may have been his slave, but you are now free; he brought you here into Pennsylvania, and you are now as free as either of us; you cannot be compelled to go with him, unless you choose; if you wish your liberty, all you have to do is to walk ashore with your children.’_ Some five minutes were consumed in conversation with Wheeler, Jane, and a stranger, when the bell rang, and I told her, if she wished to be free, she would have to act at once, as the boat was about starting. She took one of her children by the hand and attempted to rise from her seat; Wheeler placed his hands upon her shoulders and prevented her; I then, for the first time, took hold of her arm and assisted her to rise; the colored people who had collected around us seized hold of the two children, and the whole party commenced a movement towards the head of the stairs leading to the lower deck, Mr. Wheeler having at the start clinched Jane, and during the progress repeatedly and earnestly entreated her to say she wished to stay with him; at the head of the stairway I took Wheeler by the collar and held him to one side. The whole company passed down and left the boat, proceeding peacefully and quietly to Dock and Front Streets, where Jane and her children, with some of her friends, entered a carriage and were driven down Front Street; I returned to my office. _After the colored people left Dock Street in the carriage, I saw no more of them, have had no control of them, and do not know where they are. My whole connection with the affair was this._”

At the conclusion of Mr. Williamson’s cross-examination, he declared to the Court “that in the proceedings he had not designed to do violence to any law, but supposed that he had acted throughout in accordance with the law, and the legal rights of the respective parties.”

On his return to the writ of _Habeas Corpus_, Mr. Williamson was held to bail in the sum of $5,000 for perjury, and subsequently committed, without bail, for contempt,--the alleged contempt being the declaration that the parties were never in his custody. In the course of the hearing, the Judge remarked that “the conduct of those who interfered with Mr. Wheeler’s rights was a criminal, wanton, and cruel outrage.” His final decree, July 27, 1855, was as follows: “Let Mr. Williamson, the respondent, be committed to the custody of the marshal without bail or mainprise, as for a contempt of the Court in refusing to answer to the writ of _Habeas Corpus_, heretofore awarded against him at the relation of Mr. Wheeler.” On the motion looking to a committal for perjury the Judge “withheld an expression of opinion,” observing, that, “Mr. Williamson being under arrest, he may be charged at any time by the grand jury.”

The respondent attempted to regain his freedom by an application to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. After solemn hearing, the application was refused, the Hon. J. S. Black, afterwards a member of President Buchanan’s cabinet, giving the opinion of the Court. The State Court was in obvious sympathy with the National Court, and both were sympathetic with Slavery. Meanwhile Mr. Williamson continued a prisoner, until, at last, November 3, 1855, his case was again presented to the Judge who committed him, when, in reply to formal interrogatories, he declared: “I did not seek to obey the writ by producing the persons therein mentioned before the Court, because I had not, at the time of the service of the writ, the power over, the custody, or control of them, and therefore it was impossible for me to do so.… I sought to obey the writ by answering it truly; the parties not being in my possession or control, it was impossible for me to obey the writ by producing them.” The Judge announced the contempt purged and the party released from custody.

While the immediate object of this proceeding was to compel Mr. Williamson to produce the bodies of Jane, Daniel, and Isaiah, claimed as slaves in Philadelphia by a person who had voluntarily brought them there, it is impossible to explain the action of the Judge except by his desire to establish the protection of the National Government over slave-masters travelling with their slaves in Free States. The claimant, at the discharge of Mr. Williamson, stated by his counsel that he “sought an adjudication, by the highest judicial tribunal of the country, of the questions, whether Mr. Wheeler was entitled to pass over the soil of Pennsylvania with his property? and whether or not a wrong had been committed in the forcible abduction thereof?”[24]

Mr. Williamson was in the Moyamensing Prison from July 27th to November 3, 1855.

LAKE SUPERIOR, ON BOARD THE NORTH STAR, Saturday, August 11, 1855.

MY DEAR SIR,--With astonishment and indignation I have learned the story of your imprisonment; and now, from this distant retreat, where I am for the moment, make haste to send you my sympathy.

From beginning to end, from side to side, and in every aspect, this transaction can be regarded only as a clear, indubitable, and utterly unmitigated outrage. The new-fangled doctrine, that a slave-master can _voluntarily_ import his alleged slave--of course with all the revolting incidents of Slavery--into the Free States, is not more odious than preposterous. It is scouted by reason, and disowned by universal jurisprudence. You were right in disregarding it. In stepping forward to remind persons claimed as slaves on this pretext that all such claim is baseless, you did a good work. It was this knowledge which filled them with confidence to regain their God-given liberty. And for this it appears that you have been brought before a man, “dressed in a little brief authority,” who has cast you into prison.

This outrage is rendered more outrageous by the way in which it was done. It was perpetrated through perversion of the great writ of _Habeas Corpus_. This writ of freedom and deliverance, which in England is often styled the Palladium of the Constitution, which is recognized as a distinctive feature of Constitutional Government, which finds no place in despotism, and which is the very master-key appointed to unlock prison-doors and let the oppressed go free, has been made in your case, by a hocus-pocus without precedent, the instrument of imprisonment and oppression.

Strange and disgraceful as all this is, it must be considered the natural fruit of Slavery. Any person, whosoever he may be, whether simple citizen or magistrate, who undertakes to uphold this wrong, seems forthwith to lose his reason. He may be just, humane, and decent in other things, but in the support of Slavery he becomes unjust, inhuman, and indecent,--often in obvious unconsciousness of his degradation. The blindness which makes him insensible to wrong so transcendent naturally makes him insensible to the lesser wrong by which it is maintained. What is the writ of _Habeas Corpus_, the trial by jury, the privilege of debate, or your liberty or mine, in the estimation of a person who has already screwed himself to the pitch of injustice necessary for the vindication of an institution which separates parent and child, which stamps woman as a concubine, which shuts the gates of knowledge, and which snatches from the weak all the hard-earned fruits of incessant toil?

But there must be an end to these things; and as Shakespeare found a jewel in the toad’s head, so do I find a cheering omen even in the injustice which has made you its victim. There is an old saying, handed down from distant antiquity, that “whoso the gods wish to destroy they first make mad”; and I have often of late been impressed by its truth. The Slave Oligarchy is mad, and their overflowing madness runs through every agent and tool. In all that they do--especially in the Fugitive Slave Bill and its cruel enforcement, the Nebraska Bill and its felonious administration, and now in the imprisonment of an unoffending citizen--I rejoice to believe that there is unmistakable evidence of that madness which precedes a fall. Verily the day is at hand when returning justice will once more bear sway; then, among the triumphs of Freedom, will be a reckoning with unjust judges.

Meanwhile accept my congratulations on the portion of responsibility and dignity which is yours. It is a privilege to suffer for truth; and I envy not the meanness of that soul which would hesitate to prefer your place within the stone walls of a prison to the cushioned bench of the magistrate by whose irrational and tyrannical edict you have been condemned.

Believe me, my dear Sir, with much regard,

Very faithfully yours,

CHARLES SUMNER.

PASSMORE WILLIAMSON, Esq., Moyamensing Prison, Philadelphia.

THE PEN BETTER THAN THE SWORD.

LETTER TO COMMITTEE OF PUBLISHERS IN NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 26, 1855.

BOSTON, 26th September, 1855.

MY DEAR SIR,--Constrained by other things, I renounce with much reluctance the opportunity which you offer me of partaking in the splendid hospitality prepared by the Publishers for the Authors of our country.

The occasion will be of special interest. It would be pleasant to sit at feast with so many, who, as Authors, adorn our national name. And it would be pleasant also to be the guest of those active, enlightened, and generous Publishers who do so much for Authors. But I must forego this luxury. Only in “bare imagination” can I enjoy it.

At your table there will be an aggregation of various genius and talent constituting a true _Witenagemote_, which may justly gratify an honest pride of country. Grateful as this may be as a token of power, it will be more grateful still as a token of that concord growing among men in all the relations of life. The traditional feud between Authors and Publishers promises to lose itself in your Festival, even as the traditional feud between England and France is absorbed in the welcome of Victoria by Louis Napoleon. This is beautiful. And the whole scene, where differing Authors commingle under auspices of differing Publishers, will be an augury of that permanent coöperation and harmony which will secure to the pen its mightiest triumphs.

It is in honor of the pen that the company will be gathered together. If any word of mine be expected, please let me offer the following sentiment.

_The Pen of the Author_,--Exposing error, defending truth, instructing the ignorant, cheering the unhappy, while charming and animating _all_, it can do better than the Sword, and will yet receive from the world a higher praise.

Believe me, dear Sir,

Very faithfully yours,

CHARLES SUMNER.

G. P. PUTNAM, Esq.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IN NEW YORK.

LETTER TO A NEW YORK COMMITTEE, OCTOBER 7, 1855.

BOSTON, October 7, 1855.

GENTLEMEN,--Your summons addressed to me at Newport was forwarded to me at this place.

I wish I could be at your proposed meeting, but I cannot. Accept my best wishes for the Republican party of New York, which you represent. Among the multitudes already rallying spontaneously in this bodyguard of Freedom my presence cannot be needed.

The infant Hercules strangled the serpents in his cradle, and the new party, just born, gives token of a like precocious strength.

Believe me, Gentlemen, very respectfully yours,

CHARLES SUMNER.

E. D. MORGAN, LUMAN SHERWOOD, CHARLES W. ELLIOTT, Esqrs., Committee, &c.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY OFFSPRING OF THE AROUSED CONSCIENCE OF THE COUNTRY.

LETTER TO A BOSTON COMMITTEE, OCTOBER 8, 1855.

HANCOCK STREET, 8th October, 1855.

MY DEAR SIR,--Your invitation for to-night, after a journey to Newport and back, reached me only yesterday. It finds me already engaged, so that I cannot join my fellow-citizens in the proposed ratification at Faneuil Hall of the nominations lately made by the Republican Party of Massachusetts.

In my heart I have already ratified those nominations. On some other occasion I hope for an opportunity at Faneuil Hall to do the same by public speech.

Meanwhile accept my Godspeed for the good cause which we seek to promote, and for the Republican Party which is its organ. The cause is blessed alike in itself and in its influence on all who espouse it. No man can exert himself for Freedom without feeling better than before. The party is so entirely in harmony with prevailing opinion, it is such a natural and inevitable expression of the existing state of things, it is so clearly the offspring of the aroused conscience of the country, that it begins with auguries of success. Already it draws into its ranks good men from all sides, who, forgetting the things that are behind, press on to the things that are before.

Believe me, dear Sir, very faithfully yours,

CHARLES SUMNER.

WILLIAM BRIGHAM, Esq.

POLITICAL PARTIES AND OUR FOREIGN-BORN POPULATION.

SPEECH AT A REPUBLICAN RALLY IN FANEUIL HALL, NOVEMBER 2, 1855.

Immediately before the election there was a Republican Rally at Faneuil Hall, with the following officers: Richard H. Dana, Jr., Esq., _President_; Dr. Edward Reynolds, Ezra Lincoln, William Pope, Josiah W. Butler, Aaron Bancroft, Samuel Johnson, James P. Whitney, Prince Hawes, Daniel Kimball, Charles M. Ellis, N. Davies Cotton, Frederick A. Sumner, John G. Webster, George S. Winslow, Henry W. Farley, of East Boston, William P. Houston, of South Boston, Henry Slade, of Chelsea, Francis B. Fay, of Chelsea, and James L. Jones, of Chelsea, _Vice-Presidents_; John D. W. Joy, E. Baker Welch, Franklin W. Smith, Samuel W. Lane, _Secretaries_.

On taking the chair, Mr. Dana made an able speech especially in reply to one recently made by Mr. Choate, in the course of which he said that the Republicans repudiated the charge of ignoring the Constitution or menacing the Union.

Mr. Sumner was then introduced, and spoke for two hours and a quarter, with the marked attention of a very large audience. This speech was reported at length in the papers, and was afterwards printed in a pamphlet. It particularly discussed the Slave Oligarchy and its usurpations,--the outrages in Kansas,--the different political parties,--the rights of our foreign-born population,--and the Republican party. Several of these topics, being treated in other speeches, are omitted here. The part relating to our foreign-born population attracted attention at the time, and has been often quoted since. Among the audience were many persons of the Know-Nothing party, pledged against the foreign-born, who were there to create difficulty; but Mr. Sumner was allowed to proceed uninterrupted. The papers speak of “rapturous applause.” In this vindication of our foreign-born population, he acted only according to his convictions and all his votes in the Senate. Although the Know-Nothing party prevailed in Massachusetts, Mr. Sumner refused all association with it; and yet, such was the recklessness of misrepresentation, that the Richmond _Enquirer_ announced him as “the head of the Northern Know-Nothing party.” The following speech is sufficient answer to this assertion.

In the course of this speech Mr. Sumner gives his personal testimony as to Slavery, founded on what he saw in a short journey he had made through Kentucky as far as Nashville in Tennessee.

FELLOW-CITIZENS OF BOSTON:--

Are you for Freedom, or are you for Slavery? This is the question which you are to answer at the coming election. Above all other questions, national or local, it lifts itself directly in the path of every voter. There it is. It cannot be avoided. It cannot be banished away. It cannot be silenced. Forever sounding in our ears, it has a mood for every hour,--stirring us at times as with the blast of a trumpet, then visiting us in solemn tones, like the bell which calls to prayer, and then again awaking us to unmistakable duty, like the same bell, when at midnight it summons all to stay the raging conflagration.

And yet there are persons among us who seek to put this great question aside. Some clamor for financial reform, and hold up a tax-bill; others clamor for a modification of the elective franchise, and they hold up the Pope; some speak in the name of old parties, calling themselves Democrats or Whigs; others in the name of a new party, which shall be nameless at present. Surely the people of Massachusetts will not be diverted from the true issue, involving Freedom for broad territories and Freedom for themselves, by holding up a tax-bill or by holding up the Pope. The people of Massachusetts are intelligent and humane.

…

But above all these is heard the great question, which will not be postponed, Are you for Freedom, or are you for Slavery? “Under which king, Bezonian? Speak or die!” Are you for Freedom, with its priceless blessings, or are you for Slavery, with its countless wrongs and woes? Are you for God, or are you for the Devil?

Fellow-Citizens, I speak plainly; nor can words exhibiting the enormity of Slavery be too plain, whether it be regarded simply in the legislative and judicial decisions by which it is upheld, or in the unquestionable facts by which its character is revealed. It has been my fortune latterly to see Slavery face to face in its own home, in the Slave States; and I take this early opportunity to offer my testimony to the open barbarism which it sanctions. I have seen a human being knocked off at auction on the steps of a court-house, and, as the sale went on, compelled to open his mouth and show his teeth, like a horse; I have been detained in a stage-coach, that our driver might, in the phrase of the country, “help lick a nigger”; and I have been constrained, at public table, to witness the revolting spectacle of a poor slave, yet a child, almost felled to the floor by a blow on the head from a clenched fist. Such incidents were not calculated to shake my original convictions. The distant slaveholder, who, in generous solicitude for that truth which makes for Freedom, feared, that, like a certain Doctor of Divinity, I might, under influence of personal kindness, be hastily swayed from these convictions, may be assured that I saw nothing to change them one tittle, but much to confirm them,--while I was entirely satisfied that here in Massachusetts, where all read, the true character of Slavery is better known than in the Slave States themselves, where ignorance and prejudice close the avenues of knowledge.

And now, grateful for the attention with which you honor me, I venture to hope that you are assembled honestly to hear the truth,--not to gratify prejudice, to appease personal antipathies, or to indulge a morbid appetite for excitement, but with candor and your best discrimination to weigh facts and arguments in order to determine the course of duty. I address myself particularly to the friends of Freedom, Republicans, on whose invitation I appear to-night; but I make bold to ask you of other parties, who now listen, to divest yourselves, for the time, of partisan constraint,--to forget, for the moment, that you are Whigs or Democrats, or however called, and to remember only that you are _men_, with hearts to feel, with heads to understand, and with consciences to guide. Then only will you be in condition to receive the truth. “If men are not aware of the probable influence of party over them, they are so much the more likely to be blindly governed by it.” Such is the wise remark of Wilberforce.[25] And I fear that among us there are too many unconsciously governed by such bias. There are men, who, while professing candor, yet show that the bitterness of party has entered into their whole character and lives, as the bitterness of the soil in Sardinia is said to appear even in its honey.

…

There are honorable responsibilities belonging to Massachusetts, as an early and constant vindicator of Freedom, which she cannot renounce. “If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” The distant emigrant, the whole country, awaits the voice of our beloved Commonwealth in answer to the question, Are you for Freedom, or are you for Slavery? So transcendent, so exclusive, so all-absorbing at the present juncture is this question, that it is vain to speak of the position of candidates on other things. To be doubtful on this is to be wrong, and to be wrong on this is to be wholly wrong. Passing strange it is that here in Massachusetts, in this nineteenth century, we should be constrained to put this question; passing strange, that, when it is put, there should be any hesitation to answer it, by voice and vote, in such way as to speak the loudest for Freedom.

…

But, without exposing the game of political sweepstakes which the Slave Oligarchy has perpetually played,--interesting as it would be,--I prefer to hold up for one moment the assumptions, aggressions, and usurpations by which, in defiance of the Constitution, it has made Slavery national, when it is in reality sectional. Here is a brief catalogue.

…

Fellow-citizens, I have said enough to stir you; but this humiliating tale is not yet finished. An oligarchy seeking to maintain an outrage like Slavery, and drawing its inspirations from this fountain of wickedness, is naturally base, false, and heedless of justice. It is vain to expect that men who have brought themselves to become propagandists of this enormity will be constrained by any compromise, compact, bargain, or plighted faith. As the less is contained in the greater, so there is no vileness of dishonesty, no denial of human rights, that is not plainly involved in the support of an enormity which begins by changing man, created in the image of God, into a chattel, and consigns little children to the auction-block. A power which Heaven never gave can be maintained only by means which Heaven can never sanction. And this conclusion of reason is confirmed by late experience.