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Rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness] which they [in common with the Declaration of Independence] adopt as universal rules of human conduct — without regard to time, condition, or circumstances; which darken the understanding and mislead the judgment, and urge them forward to consequences from which they will shrink back with horror. I would ask them to reflect that . . . the religion they profess is not to be advanced by forgetting the precepts and the example of their Divine Master. Upon that example I would ask them to pause. He found Slavery, Roman Slavery, an institution of the country in which he lived. Did he denounce it? Did he attempt its immediate abolition? Did he do any thing, or say any thing which could in its remotest tendency encourage resistance and violence? No, his precept was, 'Servants (Slaves) obey your Masters.'” 1 "It was because he would not interfere with the administration of the laws, or abrogate their authority.”

Gentlemen of the Jury, this alleged precept of the "Divine Master" does not occur in any one of the four canonical Evangelists of the New Testament; nor have I found it in any of those Spurious and Apocryphal Records of old time. It appears originally in the Gospel according to the Hon. Peleg Sprague. "Slaves, obey your masters," "a comfortable Scripture" truly; a beatitude for the stealers of men! Gentlemen of the Jury, that was the language of Mr. Peleg Sprague at the time when the State of Georgia offered $5,000 for the head of Mr. Garrison; when the Governors of Virginia and other Slave States, sent letters to the Governor of Massachusetts asking for "penal statutes" to prohibit our discussion in Boston; it was the very year that a mob of " Gentlemen of Property and Standing" in Boston broke up a meeting of women assembled to endeavor to abolish Slavery. Gentlemen of the Jury, Mr. Sprague had his reward he sits on the bench to try me for a "misdemeanor "-" obstructing, resisting, and opposing an officer of the United States," "while in the discharge of his duty" to steal a man in Boston, that his "owner" might sell him in Richmond. The "chief commandment" of the New Testament is, "Slaves, obey your masters;" on that commandment he would now hang all the law, and the Abolitionists.

It would take a long time to tell the dark, sad tale of the trial of the Shadrach Rescuers; how the Judge constructed and charged the Jury; how he constructed his "law." It was the old story of the Stuart despotism, wickedness in the name of the law and with its forms. Gentlemen, in that trial you saw the value of the jury. The Judges of Massachusetts went under the chain which the kidnappers placed about the Court House in 1851. The Federal Judges sought to kidnap the citizens of Boston and to punish all such as opposed manstealing. The Massachusetts Judges allowed the law, which they had sworn to execute, to be struck down to the ground; nay,.themselves

1 The learned counsel for the slaveholders probably referred to Eph. vi. 5; or Coloss. iii. 22; or Tit. ii. 9; or 1 Pet. ii. 18.

sought to strike it down. The Federal Judges perverted the law to make it an instrument of torture against all such as love mankind. But the jury held up the Shield of Justice, and the poisoned weapons of the court fell blunted to the ground. The government took nothing by that motion-nothing but defeat. There was no conviction. One of the jurors said, "You may get one Hunker on any panel; it is not easy to get twelve. There was no danger of a conviction." But still it is painful to think in what peril our lives and our liberties then were.

(5.) At length came the "Burns case." You know it too well. On the night of Wednesday, May 26, 1854, in virtue of Commissioner Loring's warrant, Anthony Burns was arrested on the charge of burglary, and thrust into jail. The next morning he was brought up for condemnation. Two noble men, Mr. Dana and my friend Mr. Ellis, defended Mr. Burns. There was to be no regular trial before Commissioner Loring.

On the evening of Friday, May 28th, there was a meeting at Faneuil Hall, and an attack on the Court House where Mr. Burns was illegally held in duress. In the attack a Mr. Batchelder was killed, a man hired to aid in this kidnapping, as he had been in the stealing of Mr. Sims. To judge from the evidence offered before the Grand-Jury of the Massachusetts Court, and especially from the testimony of Marshal Freeman, it appears he was accidentally killed by some of his own confederates in that wickedness, and before the door of the Court House was broken through. But that' is of no consequence as Mr. Dana has said, "He went went in for his pay, and has got his corn." On Friday, June 4th, Mr. Burns was declared a slave by Commissioner Loring and delivered up to eternal bondage.

It seems to be in consequence of my connection with this case that I am indicted; so you now approach the end of this long defence. I come to the last part of it.

(III.) Of the Indictment against Theodore Parker.

I am indicted, gentlemen, for "resisting an officer" who was engaged in kidnapping Mr. Burns; and it is charged that I, at Boston, May 26th, "with force and arms did knowingly and wilfully, obstruct, resist, and oppose, ... Watson Freeman, then and there being an officer of the United States, to the great damage of the said Watson Freeman; to the great hinderance and obstruction of justice, [to wit, of the kidnapping of Anthony Burns,] to the evil example of all others in like case offending, against the peace and dignity of the said United States and contrary to the form of the statute made and provided."

It is also charged that "one Theodore Parker of Boston, . . . with

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force and arms in and upon the said Watson Freeman, then and there, in the peace of the said United States being, an assault did make, he the said Freeman also then and there being an officer of the said United States, to wit, Marshal of the United States, . . . and then and there also being in the due and lawful discharge of his duties as such officer" [to wit, stealing and kidnapping one Anthony Burns]. These and various other pleasant charges, Mr. Hallett, in the jocose manner of indictments, alleges against me; wherefrom I must defend myself, as best I may.

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Now, Gentlemen, that you may completely understand the accusation brought against me, I must go back a little, and bring up several other matters of fact that have straggled away from this long column of argument which I have led into the field thus far; and also rally some new forces not before drawn into the line of defence. I must speak of the Hon. Justice Curtis; of his conduct in relation to Slavery in general, to this particular prosecution, and to this special case, United States vs. Theodore Parker.

First, Gentlemen, let me speak of some events which preceded Mr. Curtis's elevation to his present distinguished post. To make the whole case perfectly clear, I must make mention of some others intimately connected with him.

There is a family in Boston which may be called the Curtis family. So far as it relates to the matter in hand, it may be said to consist of six persons, hamely, Charles P. Curtis, lawyer, and Thomas B. Curtis, merchant, sons of the late Thomas Curtis; Benjamin R. Curtis, by birth a kinsman, and by marriage a son-in-law of Charles P. Curtis, late a practising lawyer, now this Honorable Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, and his brother, George T. Curtis, lawyer, and United States Commissioner for the District of Massachusetts; Edward G. Loring, a step-son of the late Thomas Curtis, and accordingly step-brother of Charles P. and Thomas B. Curtis, lawyer, Judge of Probate for Boston, United States Commissioner, and, until recently, Lecturer at the Cambridge Law School; and also William W. Greenough, son-in-law of Charles P. Curtis, merchant.

This family, though possessing many good qualities, has had a remarkably close and intimate connection with all, or most, of the recent cases of kidnapping in Boston. Here are some of the facts, so painful for me to relate, but so indispensable to a full understanding of this case.

1. In 1836 Charles P. Curtis and Benjamin R. Curtis appeared as counsel for the slave-hunters in the famous case of the girl Med, originally a slave in the West Indies, and brought to Boston by her mistress. Med claimed her freedom on the ground that slavery was not

recognized by the laws of Massachusetts, and could not exist here unless it were in the special case, under the Federal Constitution, of fugitives from the slave States of this Union. The Messrs. Curtis contended with all their skill-totis viribus, as lawyers say that slavery might, by legal comity, exist in Massachusetts- that slaves were property by the law of nations; and that an ownership which is legal in the West Indies continued in Boston, at least so far as to leave the right to seize and carry away.

Mr. Charles P. Curtis had already appeared as counsel for a slavehunter in 1832, and had succeeded in restoring a slave child, only twelve or fourteen years of age, to his claimant who took him to Cuba with the valuable promise that he should be free in the Spanish West Indies.1

In the Med case Mr. Benjamin R. Curtis made a long and elaborate argument to show that "a citizen of a slaveholding State, who comes to Massachusetts for a temporary purpose of business or pleasure and brings his slave as a personal attendant, may restrain that slave for the purpose of carrying him out of the State and returning him to the domicil of his owner." To support this proposition, he made two points:

"1. That this child by the law of Louisiana is now a slave."

"2. That the law of Massachusetts will so far recognize and give effect to the law of Louisiana, as to allow the master to exercise this restricted power over his slave." That is, the power to keep her here as a slave, to remove her to Louisiana, and so make her a slave for ever and her children after her.

To prove this last point he says by quotation, "we always import, together with their persons, the existing relations of foreigners between themselves." So as we "import" the natural relation of husband and wife, or parent and child, in the Irish immigrants, and respect the same, we ought equally to import and respect the unnatural and forcible relation of master and slave in our visitors from Cuba or Louisiana.

"It will be urged," he said, "that though we claim to exercise only a qualified and limited right over the slave, namely the right to remove him from the State, yet if this is allowed, all the rights of the master must be allowed, . . and thus Slavery will be introduced into the Commonwealth. To this I answer,

"(1.) There is no practical difficulty in giving this qualified effect to the law of Louisiana, [allowing the master to bring and keep his slaves here and remove them when he

1 Daily Advertiser, Dec. 7th, 1832. Mr. Sewall, the early and indefatigable friend of the slave, asked the Court to appoint a guardian ad litem for the child, who was not 14, who should see that he was not enslaved. But the slaveholder's counsel objected, and the Judge (Shaw) refused; yet to his honor be it said in a similar case in 1841, when Mr. Sewall was counsel for a slave child under the same circumstances, he delivered him to a guardian appointed by the Probate Court. 3 Metcalf, 72.

will]. The Constitution of the United States has settled this question. That provides for and secures to the master, the exercise of his right to the very extent claimed in this case."

“(2.) Neither is there any theoretical difficulty.”

To do this, he thinks, will "promote harmony and good feeling, where it is extremely desirable to promote it, encourage frequent intercourse, and soften prejudices by increasing acquaintance, and tend to peace and union and good-will." "It will work no injury to the State [Massachusetts], by violating any public law of the State. The only law in the statute-book applicable to the subject of Slavery is the law against kidnapping." "It will work no direct injury to the citizens of this State for, . . . it respects only strangers." "It is consistent with the public policy of Massachusetts, to permit this . . . right of the master." "It may be perfectly consistent with our policy not only to recognize the validity and propriety of those institutions [of Slavery] in the States where they exist, but even to interfere actively to enable the citizens of those States to enjoy those institutions at home." That is, it may be the duty of Massachusetts, "to interfere actively " in Louisiana for the establishment and support of Slavery there!

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Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, he adds, have made laws allowing the slaveholder this right: "The legislatures of those States are the legitimate and highest authority in regard to their public policy; what they have declared on this subject, must be deemed to be true. . . . We are not at liberty to suppose that it is contrary to their public policy, that the master should exercise this right within their territory. I respectfully ask what difference there is between the policy of Pennsylvania, New York, Rhode Island, and New Jersey, and the policy of Massachusetts, on the subject of Slavery."

"I shall now attempt," he adds, "to prove that Slavery is not immoral." How do you think he proved that? Did he cite the Bible? No, he left that to lower law divines. Did he manufacture Bible? No, the Hon. Peleg Sprague had sufficiently done that a year before. He took a shorter cut-he denied there was any morality but Legality. “I take it to be perfectly clear," said this young man in all the moral enthusiasm of his youth, "that the Standard of Morality by which Courts of Justice are to be guided is that which the law prescribes. Your Honors' Opinion as Men or as Moralists has no bearing on the question. Your Honors are to declare what the Law deems moral or immoral.”

Gentlemen, that needs no comment; this trial is comment enough. But according to that rule no law is immoral. It was "not immoral" in 1410 to hang and burn thirty-nine men in one day for reading the

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