"The 'fugitive Slave Law' Is, Indeed, Simply A Declaratory Act.
For it
is unfortunately the fact, that the Southern States gave in their
adhesion to the Federal Republic solely
On condition that, while the
slave trade should cease, the institution of slavery should be
respected, and they should have the right to follow and seize fugitive
slaves in any part of the Union. The 'fugitive slave law' was the work
of the 'Union' party - a party composed of men of all shades of opinion,
who wished, by conciliation, to prevent the threatened withdrawal of
South Carolina and other slave States from the Union.
"Greatly as all just and dispassionate men must abhor slavery, every
one must admit the difficulties with which its immediate abolition is
here surrounded. The negro does not possess the cordial sympathy of the
white man. For while a small, and, politically speaking, uninfluential,
party are prepared to make every sacrifice and run all risks in order
to blot out slavery on the instant, the influential and acting leaders
of the majority, whatever their occasional language of denunciation,
and affectation of horror, are not disposed to brave the rebellion of
the South, and the possible disruption of the Republic, for the sake of
shortening the thraldom of the negro some fifty years. They profess to
rely upon the natural progress of events, which, by quiet change, has
already banished slavery from the majority of the States originally
parties to the Union; and has, within the last few years, forbidden the
future existence of slave States north of latitude 36 degrees 3o' - for the
gradual extinction of the system; and in the meantime they are prepared
to alleviate the lot of the slave; to refuse any extension of slavery;
and, as far as concession can obtain it, to narrow the area which it
now occupies.
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