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Updated: May 29, 2025
For the compromise on representation it might be pleaded, that by it no license was given to wrong; there was only a concession of disproportionate power to one section, fairly outweighed in the scale of the public good by the establishment of a great political order. But the action on the slave trade was the deliberate sanction for twenty years of man-stealing of the most flagitious sort.
No voice? Yes, we have heard on the high seas the voice of a war-steamer, built for a man-stealing Confederacy, with English gold, in an English dockyard, going out of an English harbor, manned by English sailors, with the full knowledge of English government officers, in defiance of the Queen's proclamation of neutrality! So far has English sympathy overflowed.
It claimed that the nation was bound to repent at once, to let the oppressed go free, and to admit them to all the rights and privileges of others; because, it asserted, no man has a right to enslave or imbrute his brother; because liberty is inalienable; because there is no difference, in principle, between slave- holding and man-stealing, which the law brands as piracy; and because no length of bondage can invalidate man's claim to himself, or render slave laws anything but "an audacious usurpation."
The slaves were usually taken to the West Indies, although occasionally part of a cargo found its way to New England, where the wholesome old laws against man-stealing had become a dead letter on the statute-book. In 1767 a bill was brought before the Legislature of Massachusetts to prevent "the unwarrantable and unnatural custom of enslaving mankind."
And by that still nobler, higher, and holier spirit of our beloved Saviour, we would ask you to stamp upon the head of the slaveholder, with a brand deeper than that which marks the victim of his wrongs, the infamy of theft, adultery, man-stealing, piracy, and murder, and, by the force of public opinion, compel him to "unloose the heavy burden, and let the oppressed go free."
But in the case of stealing a man, the first act drew down the utmost power of punishment; however often repeated, or however aggravated the crime, human penalty could do no more. The fact that the penalty for man-stealing was death, and the penalty for property-stealing, the mere restoration of double, shows that the two cases were adjudicated on totally different principles.
"When your boat was seen sailing down the lagoon this afternoon the natives were very frightened, fearing that another 'man-stealing ship, as they call the Hawaiian labour vessels, was making a second raid upon them, for the village on the little island where you are anchored was surprised by the crew of one of these vessels in the night, and every adult person, male and female, seized, handcuffed, and carried on board.
But what should we say, if it should turn out, that we were the causes of those very cruelties, which we affected to prevent? But, if it were not so, ought the first nation in the world to condescend to be the executioner of savages? Another way of keeping up the Slave Trade was by the practice of man-stealing. The evidence was particularly clear upon this head.
He found no profit, however, in his piratical venture, for the story coming out, he was accused in court of "murder, man-stealing, and Sabbath-breaking," and his slaves were sent home. It was wholly as merchandise that the blacks were regarded.
The Cylician pirates, the Barbary robbers, nay, the Tartars of the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries, were virtuous and civilized in comparison with what would be an independent, man-stealing, and man-whipping Southern agglomeration of lawless men. The free States could have no security, even if all the thus called gentlemen and men of honor were to sign a treaty or a compromise.
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