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71]
Sims anniversary.1
Mr. Chairman: There is a resolution on your table to this effect:
Resolved, Therefore, That we advise all colored persons, liable to these arrests, to leave the United States, unless they are fully resolved to take the life of any officer who shall attempt, under any pretext, to seize them; and we urge the formation in every town of vigilance committees, prepared to secure to every person claimed as a slave the fullest trial possible, and to avail themselves fearlessly, according to their best judgment, of all the means God and Nature have put into their hands, to see that substantial justice be done.
To this
Mr. Garrison moves as an amendment the following:
Resolved, That if “resistance to tyrants,” by bloody weapons, “ is obedience to God,” and if our Revolutionary fathers were justified in wading through blood to freedom and independence, then every fugitive slave is justified in arming himself for protection and defence,--in taking the life of every marshal, commissioner, or other person who attempts to reduce him to bondage; and the millions who are clanking their chains on our soil find ample warrant in rising en masse, and asserting their right to liberty, at whatever sacrifice of the life of their oppressors.
Resolved, That the State in which no fugitive slave can remain in safety, and from which he must flee in order to secure
