Speech of John Hossack, Convicted of a Violation of the Fugitive Slave Law | Page 4

law, Sir, under which I appear before you, overrides these plain provisions, and commits this whole question to one man, and offers him a bribe to trample right and liberty under foot. I know, Sir, it may be said that Jim Gray was a slave, and not entitled to these humane provisions. Had he never worn the chain of the oppressor, nor felt the lash of the bloody task-master--had he been born in Canada, or any where else on the globe--had he been a citizen of one of the States of this Union, and never been enslaved, it would have been all the same. His liberty would have been stricken down, and he been given to the party claiming his life-long toil, and your Commissioner would have pocketed the bribe offered by this law for doing such a crime against humanity and the plainest provisions of the Constitution.
No sir; in a Court of the United States, where the Constitution provides for trial by jury, I ought not to be sentenced for raising my hand to rescue a fellow-man from a mob that would strip him of his liberty and life-long toil without due process of law, without trial by jury. Sir, this, law tramples so flagrantly upon the spirit and letter of the Constitution, that I ought not to be sentenced.
Before passing from the Constitutional objections to this law, I would call the attention of your Honor to the partiality of the law, which is so at variance with the designs of the Fathers in organizing this Government. No man can read the Constitution--in which the word slave cannot be found; from which the idea that a man could be reduced to a thing, and held as property, was carefully excluded--no man, I say, can read that Constitution, and come to the conclusion that slavery was to be fostered, guaranteed and protected far beyond every thing else in the country. Admit that Jim Gray was Phillips's property, how comes it that that particular property is more sacred than any other property? Phillips's horse escapes from him, and is found in a distant State; but the President of the United States, and every department of Government, are not put on the track to find the horse, and return him to Phillips's stable, and then pay the whole bill from the National Treasury. No, Sir. But his slave escapes--he runs away, and, for some reason, his property in man is so much more holy and sacred, that the whole Government is bound to take the track and hunt, the poor panting fugitive down, and carry him back to his chains and bondage at the Government's expense.
Sir, under a Constitution unstained by the word slave, we have a law magnifying slave property above all other property in the nation--a law giving it guarantees that no other property could possibly obtain. Sir, the partiality of this law is so great, that it stands opposed to a Constitution that guarantees equal justice and protection to all.
John G. Fee is driven out of his Kentucky home, and robbed of the fruits of his life-long toil. There is no power to secure him his home, or protect him in his rights of property or opinion. But had John G. Fee only owned a slave, and his slave escaped, the Government, under this law, would have followed his slave to the utmost limit of the United States, and returned his slave to him at its own expense. Your Honor will pardon me, (if I need pardon,) but I cannot, for the life of me, see what there is in robbing a man of his inalienable rights and enslaving him for life, that should entitle it to the special and peculiar protection of national law.
I am aware, Sir, that I shall be reminded that judges, marshals, attorneys, and many citizens, regard this law as Constitutional, and stand ready to execute it, though it trample every principle of the Declaration of Independence in the dust. Sir, no law can be enacted so bad but that it will find men deluded or base enough to execute it. The law of Egypt that consigned the new-born babe to the slaughter found tools for its execution. The bloody decree of Herod found men ready to obey the law of the country, though it commanded the slaughter of the innocents of a province, Sir, tell me not of men ready and willing to execute the law! My Redeemer, whose name I am hardly worthy to speak, and yet whose name is all my trust, although he knew no sin, yet he was crucified by law.
Again, Sir, it will be said that some whom the world calls Doctors of Divinity and Doctors of Law have undertaken to prove that slavery was guaranteed by the Constitution.