[101] speak in favor of the stamps. And shall we be more tolerant of those who volunteer in favor of this Bill—more tolerant of the Slave-Hunter, who, under its safeguard, pursues his prey upon our soil? The Stamp Act could not be executed here. Can the Fugitive Slave Bill? And here, Sir, let me say, that it becomes me to speak with peculiar caution. It happens to me to sustain an important relation to this Bill. Early in professional life I was designated by the late Mr. Justice Story one of the Commissioners of the Courts of the United States, and, though I have not very often exercised the functions of this post, yet my name is still upon the lists. As such I am one of those before whom, under the recent Act of Congress, the panting fugitive may be brought for the decision of the question, whether he is a freeman or a slave. But while it becomes me to speak with caution, I shall not hesitate to speak with plainness. I cannot forget that I am a man, although I am a Commissioner.He thus gives vent to his own feelings:
Surely, no person of humane feelings, and with any true sense of justice—living in a land ‘where bells have knolled to church’—whatever may be the apology of public station, could fail to recoil from such service. For myself let me say, that I can imagine no office, no salary, no consideration, which I would not gladly forego, rather than become in any way an agent in enslaving my brother-man. Where for me would be comfort and solace, after such a work! In dreams and in waking hours, in solitude and in the street, in the meditations of the closet, and in the affairs of men, wherever I turned, there my victim would stare me in the face; from the distant rice-fields and sugar plantations of the South, his cries beneath the vindictive lash, his moans at the thought of Liberty once his, now alas! ravished from him, would pursue me, repeating the tale of his fearful doom, and sounding, forever sounding in my ears, ‘Thou art the man!’
