The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims Part 6

Judge Burgoyne subsequently decided that, in as far as the Fugitive Slave Law was intended to suspend the writ of _habeas corpus_--and he believed that it was so intended--it clearly transcended the limits prescribed by the Const.i.tution, and is "utterly void." Judge B. required the United States Marshal to answer to the writ on the following Friday; and on his neglect to do so, fined and imprisoned him. Judge Leavitt, of the United States Court, soon released the Marshal from prison.

The _Cincinnati Columbian_, of February 29, gave the following account:--The last act of the drama of the fugitives was yesterday performed by the rendition of the seven persons whose advent into the city, under the b.l.o.o.d.y auspices of murder, caused such a sensation in the community.

After the decision of Judge Leavitt, Sheriff Brashears surrendered the four fugitives in his custody, under a _capias_ from an Ohio court, to United States Marshal Robinson. An omnibus was brought to the jail, and the fugitives were led into it--a crowd of spectators looking on.

Margaret was in custody of Deputy-Marshal Brown. She appeared greatly depressed and dispirited. The little infant, Silla, was carried by Pfc. Russell, the door-keeper of the United States Court, and was crying violently. Pollock, the reporter of the proceedings in the United States Court, conducted another of the fugitives, and all were safely lodged in the omnibus, which drove down to the Covington ferry-boat; but, although a large crowd followed it, no hootings or other signs of excitement or disapprobation were shown.

On arriving at the Kentucky sh.o.r.e, a large crowd was in attendance, which expressed its pleasure at the termination of the long proceedings in this city by triumphant shouts.

The fugitives were escorted to the jail, where they were safely incarcerated, and the crowd moved off to the Magnolia Hotel, where several toasts were given and drank. The crowd outside were addressed from the balcony by H.H. Robinson, Esq., United States Marshal for the Southern District of Ohio, who declared that he had done his duty and no more, and that it was a pleasure to him to perform an act that added another link to the glorious chain that bound the Union.

[What a _Union_! For what "glorious" purposes!]

Mr. Finnell, attorney for the claimants, said he never loved the Union so dearly as now. It was proved to be a substantial reality.

Judge Flinn also addressed to the crowd one of his peculiar orations; and was followed by Mr. Gaines, owner of Margaret and the children. After hearty cheering the crowd dispersed.

Further to signalize their triumph, the slaveholders set on the Covington mob to attack Mr. Babb, reporter for one of the Cincinnati papers, on the charge of being an abolitionist, and that gentleman was knocked down, kicked, trampled on, and would undoubtedly have been murdered, but for the interference of some of the United States Deputy Marshals.

A legal irregularity on the part of the Sheriff was brought to the notice of Judge Carter on the morning of February 29.

It was pa.s.sed over lightly.

On the Sunday after the delivery of the slaves, they were visited in the Covington jail by Rev. P.C. Ba.s.sett, whose account of his interview, especially with Margaret, was published in the _American Baptist_, and may also be found in the _National Antislavery Standard_ of March 15, 1850.

Margaret confessed that she had killed the child. "I inquired," says Mr. Ba.s.sett, "if she were not excited almost to madness when she committed the act! 'No,' she replied, 'I was as cool as I now am; and would much rather kill them at once, and thus end their sufferings, than have them taken back to slavery and be murdered by piece-meal.' She then told the story of her wrongs. She spoke of her days of suffering, of her nights of unmitigated toil, while the bitter tears coursed their way down her cheeks."

Governor Chase, of Ohio, made a requisition upon Governor Morehead, of Kentucky, for the surrender of Margaret Garner, charged with murder. The requisition was taken by Joseph Cooper, Esq. to Gov. Morehead, at Frankfort, on the _6th of March_--an unpardonable delay in the circ.u.mstances. Gov.

Morehead issued an order for the surrender of Margaret. On taking it to Louisville, Mr. Cooper found that Margaret, with her infant child, and the rest of Mr. Gaines's slaves had been sent down the river in the steamboat Henry Lewis, to be sold in Arkansas. Thus it was that Gaines kept his pledged word that Margaret should be surrendered upon the requisition of the Governor of Ohio! On the pa.s.sage down the Ohio, the steamboat, in which the slaves were embarked, came in collision with another boat, and so violently that Margaret and her child, with many others, were thrown into the water.

About twenty-five persons perished. A colored man seized Margaret and drew her back to the boat, but her babe was drowned! "The mother," says a correspondent of the _Louisville Courier_, "exhibited no other feeling than joy at the loss of her child." So closed another act of this terrible tragedy. The slaves were transferred to another boat, and taken to their destination. (_See_ Mr. Cooper's letter to Gov. Chase, dated Columbus, March 11, 1856.) Almost immediately on the above tragic news, followed the tidings that Gaines had determined to bring Margaret back to Covington, Kentucky, and hold her subject to the requisition of the Governor of Ohio. Evidently he could not stand up under the infamy of his conduct. Margaret was brought back, and placed in Covington jail, to await a requisition. On Wednesday, Mr. c.o.x, the prosecuting-attorney, received the necessary papers from Gov. Chase, and the next day (Thursday), two of the Sheriffs deputies went over to Covington for Margaret, but did not find her, as she had been taken away from the jail the night before. The jailor said he had given her up on Wednesday night, to a man who came there with a written order from her master, Gaines, but could not tell where she had been taken. The officers came back and made a return 'not found.'

The _Cincinnati Gazette_ said,--"On Friday our sheriff received information which induced him to believe that she had been sent on the railroad to Lexington, thence via Frankfort to Louisville, there to be shipped off to the New Orleans slave market.

He immediately telegraphed to the sheriff at Louisville (who holds the original warrant from Gov. Morehead, granted on the requisition of Gov. Chase,) to arrest her there, and had a deputy in readiness to go down for her. But he has received no reply to his dispatch. As she was taken out on Wednesday night, there is reason to apprehend that she has already pa.s.sed Louisville, and is now on her way to New Orleans.

Why Mr. Gaines brought Margaret back at all, we cannot comprehend. If it was to vindicate his character, he was most unfortunate in the means he selected, for his duplicity has now placed this in a worse light than ever before, and kept before the public the miserable spectacle of his dishonor.

We have learned now, by experience, what is that boasted comity of Kentucky on which Judge Leavitt so earnestly advised Ohio to rely."

The a.s.sertion of the _Louisville Journal_, that Margaret was kept in Covington jail "ten days," and that the Ohio authorities had been notified of the same, is p.r.o.nounced to be untrue in both particulars by the _Cincinnati Gazette_, which paper also declares that prompt action was taken by the governor of Ohio, and the attorney and sheriff of Hamilton County, as soon as the fact was known.

Here we must leave MARGARET, a n.o.ble woman indeed, whose heroic spirit and daring have won the willing, and extorted the unwilling, admiration of hundreds of thousands. Alas for her! after so terrible a struggle, so b.l.o.o.d.y a sacrifice, so near to deliverance once, twice, and even a third time, to be, by the villainy and lying or her "respectable" white owner again engulphed in the abyss of Slavery! What her fate is to be, it is not hard to conjecture. But friendless, heart-stricken, robbed of her children, outraged as she has been, not wholly without friends,

"Yea, three firm friends, more sure than day and night, Herself, her Maker, and the angel Death."

Extract from a sermon recently delivered in Cleveland, Ohio, by Rev.

H. BUSHNELL, from the following text: "And it was so, that all that saw it, said, There was no such deed done nor seen from the day that the children of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt unto this day: CONSIDER OF IT, TAKE ADVICE, AND SPEAK YOUR MINDS."--JUDGES XIX: 30.

A few weeks ago, just at dawn of day, might be seen a company of strangers crossing the winter bridge over the Ohio River, from the State of Kentucky, into the great city of our own State, whose hundred church-spires point to heaven, telling the travellers that in this place the G.o.d of Abraham was worshipped, and that here Jesus the Messiah was known, and his religion of love taught and believed. And yet, no one asked them in or offered them any hospitality, or sympathy, or a.s.sistance. After wandering from street to street, a poor laboring man gave them the shelter of his humble cabin, for they were strangers and in distress. Soon it was known abroad that this poor man had offered them the hospitalities of his home, and a rude and ferocious rabble soon gathered around his dwelling, demanding his guests. With loud clamor and horrid threatening they broke down his doors, and rushed upon the strangers. They were an old man and his wife, their daughter and her husband with four children; and they were of the tribe of slaves fleeing from a bondage which was worse than death. There was now no escape--the tribes of Israel had banded against them. On the side of the oppressor there is power. And the young wife and mother, into whose very soul the iron had entered, hearing the cry of the master: "Now we'll have you all!" turning from the side of her husband and father, with whom she had stood to repel the foe, seized a knife, and with a single blow nearly severed the head from the body of her darling daughter, and throwing its b.l.o.o.d.y corpse at his feet, exclaimed, "Yes, you _shall_ have us all!

take that!" and with another blow inflicted a ghastly wound upon the head of her beautiful son, repeating, "Yes, you _shall_ have us all--take that!" meanwhile calling upon her old mother to help her in the quick work of emanc.i.p.ation--for there were two more. But the pious old grandmother could not do it, and it was now too late--the rescuers had subdued and bound them. They were on their way back to the house of their bondage--a life more bitter than death! On their way through that city of churches whose hundred spires told of Jesus and the good Father above; on their way amid the throng of Christian men, whose n.o.ble sires had said and sung, "Give me _liberty_, or give me _death_."

But they all tarried in the great Queen City of the West--in chains, and in a felon's cell. There our preacher visited them again and again. There he saw the old grandfather and his aged companion, whose weary pilgrimage of unrequited toil and tears was nearly at its end. And there stood the young father and the heroic wife "Margaret." Said the preacher, "Margaret, why did you kill your child?" "It was my own," she said, "given me of G.o.d, to do the best a mother could in its behalf. _I have done the best I could!_ I would have done more and better for the rest! I knew it was better for them to go home to G.o.d than back to slavery." "But why did you not trust in G.o.d--why not wait and hope?" "I did wait, and then we dared to do, and fled in fear, but in hope; hope fled--G.o.d did not appear to save--_I did the best I could!"_

And who was this woman? A n.o.ble, womanly, amiable, _affectionate mother_. "But was she not deranged?" Not at all--calm, intelligent, but resolute and determined. "But was she not fiendish, or beside herself with pa.s.sion?" No, she was most tender and affectionate, and all her pa.s.sion was that of a _mother's fondest love_. I reasoned with her, said the preacher; tried to awaken a sense of guilt, and lead her to repentance and to Christ. But there was no remorse, no desire of pardon, no reception of Christ or his religion. To her it was a religion of _slavery_, more cruel than death.

And where had she lived? where thus taught? Not down among the rice swamps of Georgia, or on the banks of Red River. No, but within sixteen miles of the Queen City of the West! In a nominally Christian family--whose master was most liberal in support of the Gospel, and whose mistress was a communicant at the Lord's table, and a professed follower of Christ!

Here, in this family, where slavery is found in its mildest form, she had been kept in ignorance of G.o.d's will and word, and learned to know that the mildest form of American slavery, at this day of Christian civilization and Democratic liberty, was worse than death itself! She had learned by an experience of many years, that it was so bad she had rather take the life of her own dearest child, without the hope of Heaven for herself, than that _it_ should experience its unutterable agonies, which were to be found even in a Christian family! But here are her two little boys, of eight and ten years of age. Taking the eldest boy by the hand, the preacher said to him, kindly and gently, "Come here, my boy; what is your name?" "Tom, sir." "Yes, _Thomas_." "No sir, _Tom_." "Well, Tom, how old are you?" "Three _months_." "And how old is your little brother?" "Six _months_, sir!" "And have you no other name but Tom?" "No." "What is your father's name?" "Haven't got any!" "Who made you, Tom?" "n.o.body!" "Did you ever hear of G.o.d or Jesus Christ?" "No, sir." And this was slavery in its best estate. By and by the aged couple, and the young man and his wife, the remaining children, with the master, and the dead body of the little one, were escorted through the streets of the Queen City of the West by a _national guard of armed men_, back to the great and chivalrous State of old Kentucky and away to the shambles of the South--back to a life-long servitude of hopeless despair.

It was a long, sad, silent procession down to the banks of the Ohio; and as it pa.s.sed, the death-knell of freedom tolled heavily. The sovereignty of Ohio trailed in the dust beneath the oppressor's foot, and the great confederacy of the tribes of modern Israel attended the funeral obsequies, and made ample provision for the necessary expenses! "And it was so, that all that saw it, said, _There was no such deed done, nor seen from the day that the children of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt unto this day_; CONSIDER OF IT, TAKE ADVICE, AND SPEAK YOUR MINDS!"

With the sad case of MARGARET GARNER we close, for the present, the record of the Fugitive Slave Law, as its history has been daily writing itself in our country's annals. Enactment of h.e.l.l! which has marked every step of its progress over the land by suffering and by crimes,--crimes of the bloodiest dye, groanings which cannot fully be uttered; which is tracked by the dripping blood of its victims, by their terrors and by their despair; against which, and against that Wicked Nation which enacted it, and which suffers it still to stand as their LAW, the cries of the down-trodden poor go up continually into the ears of G.o.d,--cries of bitterest anguish, mingled with fiercest execrations--thousands of Rachels weeping for their children, and will not be comforted, because they _are not_.

Reader, is your patriotism of the kind which believes, with the supporters of old monarchies, that the Sovereign Power can do no wrong? Consider the long record which has been laid before you, and say if your country has not enacted a most wicked, cruel, and shameful law, which merits only the condemnation and abhorrence of every heart. Consider that this law was aimed at the life, liberty, and happiness of the poor and least-privileged portion of our people--a cla.s.s whom the laws should befriend, protect, and raise up. What is the true character of a law, whose working, whose fruits are such as this meagre outline of its history shows? Is it fit that such deeds and such a law should have your sanction and support?

Will you remain in a moment's doubt whether to be a friend or a foe to such a law? Will you countenance or support the man, in the church or in the state, who is not its open and out-spoken opponent?

Will you not, rather, yourself trample it under foot, as alike the disgrace of your country, the enemy of humanity, and the enemy of G.o.d? And n.o.bly join, with heart and hand, every honest man who seeks to load with the opprobrium they deserve, the law itself and everything that justifies and upholds it?

In this tract no mention is made of that great company of slaves who, flying from their intolerable wrongs and burdens, are overtaken before reaching the Free States--(alas, that we should mock ourselves with this empty name of _free_!)--and carried back into a more remote and hopeless slavery; nor of the thousands who, having fled in former years, and established themselves in industry and comfort in the Northern States, were compelled again to become fugitives, leaving their little all behind them, into a still more Northern land where, under British law, they find at last a resting-place and protection; nor to any great extent of the numerous cases of white citizens, prosecuted, fined, hara.s.sed in every way, for the _crime_ of giving shelter and succor to the hunted wanderers. To have included these--all emphatically _victims_ of the Fugitive Slave Law--would swell our tract into a volume. What a testimony against our land and our people is given by their acc.u.mulated weight! EVERY LIVING MAN AND WOMAN is GUILTY OF THIS GREAT SIN, WHO EITHER BY APOLOGY, OR BY SILENCE, LENDS IT THE LEAST SUPPORT.

--> In a record like the foregoing, dealing so largely with facts and dates, perfect accuracy is not to be expected, although much pains have been taken to make it strictly correct. Any information, on good authority, which will help to make the record more exact, or more complete, will be very gratefully received. It should be addressed to SAMUEL MAY, JR., No. 21 Cornhill, Boston, Ma.s.s.

Published at the office of the AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, No. 138 Na.s.sau Street, New York. Also to be had at the Anti-Slavery Offices, No. 21 Cornhill, Boston, and No. 31 North Fifth Street, Philadelphia; of JOEL McMILLAN, Salem, Columbiana Co., Ohio, and of JACOB WALTON, Jr., Adrian, Michigan.

[Transcriber's note: The following remain as in the original: Pittsburg, Pennsylvania; Los Angelos; Pittsburgh Sat.u.r.day Visiter.]