Elias Nason, The Life and Times of Charles Sumner: His Boyhood, Education and Public Career.

[132] in our affairs, voting in our elections, whose liberty is not assailed also. Without any discrimination of color, the bill surrenders all who may be claimed as “owing service or labor” to the same tyrannical judgment. And mark once more its heathenism: by unrelenting provisions it visits with bitter penalties of fine and imprisonment the faithful men and women who may render to the fugitive that countenance, succor, and shelter which Christianity expressly requires. Thus, from beginning to end, it sets at nought the best principles of the constitution, and the very laws of God.

I will not dishonor the home of the Pilgrims and of the Revolution by admitting, nay, I cannot believe,--that this bill will be executed here. Individuals among us, as elsewhere, may forget humanity in a fancied loyalty to law; but the public conscience will not allow a man who has trodden our streets as a freeman to be dragged away as a slave. By his escape from bondage, he has shown that true manhood which must grapple to him every honest heart. He may be ignorant and rude, as he is poor; but he is of a true nobility. The fugitive slaves of the United States are among the heroes of our age. In sacrificing them to this foul enactment of Congress, we should violate every sentiment of hospitality, every whispering of the heart, every