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 THE RANDOLPH EPISTLES. 
 
 
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THE RANDOLPH EPISTLES. 
 
 The Souih's losses in fugitive slaves amount to 
 $22,000,000 in the last 40 years, and her 
 annual losses amount to $550,000, for which 
 the North is responsible^ tfc. — Jury Trial in 
 the Free Stales, devised solely for the enfran- 
 chisement of the fugitives — The Military re- 
 sources and strength of the South, rf-r. 
 
 Washington Citt, July 18, 1850. 
 About nineteen-twemieths of all the wars, 
 civil and national, which have wasted and 
 saddened the earth, have sprung out of 
 aggressions upon the property-rights of men 
 and nations. Mr. Webster once said, and 
 with that felicity of thought for which he is 
 so remarkable, that the men of the revolution 
 were so sensitive to the least encroachment 
 upon their property-rights that they even 
 rebelled against a preamble, and took up 
 arms against the first maritime power in the 
 world, for the recitals of an act of Par- 
 liament, &c. In homelier words, they 
 maintained that those who pay the taxes 
 must lay the taxes, and that the rights of 
 taxation and representation were inseparable 
 ■elements of all rightful legislation. In sup- 
 port of this principle they drew the sword, 
 and sheathed it no move until they had 
 cleaved the colonies and kingdom asunder. 
 As practical grievances, the modeiate duties 
 upon teas, stamps, &c, were scarcely felt, 
 and the whole controversy arose about the 
 right to impose them. Moreover, the re- 
 venues raised were all destined to colonial 
 uses; and in all the time the colonial tariff 
 lasted, scarcely amounted to a tythe of what 
 
 it costs a large portion of their descendant* 
 annually, and over and above all the burthens 
 and expenses of the State and Federal Gov- 
 ernments, and without a dollar being applied 
 to any public uses, or returning into their 
 pockets, through any of the channels of the 
 public expenditures. 
 
 The descendants referred to are the people 
 of the South, and the monies spoken of, are 
 the ar.nual values of her fugitive slaves, 
 which the citizens of the North entice from 
 her borders and set at liberty. This has 
 been carried on for these thirty or forty 
 years, and in late years through organized 
 associations, with alarming frequency and a 
 most amazing audacity. One of the worst 
 omens of the times is, the shamelessness with 
 which of late, men of property and character 
 at the North, avow and boast of their crimi- 
 nal participation in decoying away and de- 
 priving owners of their slaves in the slave 
 States. It is scarcely two months ago since 
 " The New York State Vigilance Anti- 
 Slavery Committee," (of which tha opulent 
 and famous Gerrit Smith is chairman) held 
 its anniversary meeting in public in the city 
 of New York, and I quote a single passage 
 from its secretary's official report : 
 
 " The Committee have within the yedr f 
 since the 1st of May, 1849, assisted one 
 hundred and fifty-one fugitives {for thai, 
 you know, is our business) in escaping from, 
 servitude!" 
 
 Are these people aware how deeply they 
 have criminated themselves in these avowals? 
 
Do the citizens of New York hold themselves 
 irresponsible to public opinion in conniving 
 at felonies and giving them impunity ? Do 
 they not know that the members of this 
 committee, by visiting a sister State, violat- 
 ing her criminal laws, and carrying oil her 
 property, themselves become, in the sense of 
 the Constitution, fugitives from justice, and 
 by virtue of their own confessions of the 
 crimes they have committed, are subject to 
 arrest and delivery to the authorities of the 
 State whose laws have been broken ? These 
 one hundred and fifty-one slaves, at the 
 most moderate estimate, were worth $500 
 a piece, which amounts to an aggregate 
 value of $75,500; and if the same persons 
 
 their felonious thieveries committed against 
 the property-rights of her sister States, and 
 in flagrant violation of the Constitution of 
 the United States; yet no man lays hands 
 on them, or denounces or reproves them ! 
 
 I propose in this paper to bring these 
 abuses to public attention. My subject is 
 the escape to, and emancipation in the free 
 States, of fugitives from labor from the slave 
 States. My object is to ascertain, as nearly 
 as possible, their numbers, their values, and 
 the probable losses sustained by the South 
 annually and- aggregately, in the course of 
 the last forty years. This has never hsp.n 
 attempted, that I know of. I have, indeed, 
 occasionally seen some loose and unsatis- 
 
 had publicly confessed that they had stolen j factory statements made upon one side and 
 
 that amount of money from the same citizens 
 in the States of Maryland or Virginia, or had 
 fraudulently acquired it through counterfeit 
 
 contradicted on the other, in the two Houses 
 of Congress; but no data were given on 
 either side, and the estimates seemed to be 
 
 bank bills, is there a judicial officer in the State altogether conjectural. Entire accuracy in 
 of N. York who would not have felt it to have suc h a matter, is, of course, unattainable; 
 been his duty, to have caused them to have | but I see not why, through estimates drawn 
 
 been arrested and imprisoned upon their own 
 confessions of the felonies, and have detained 
 them subject to the demand of the Executive 
 uf the State whose law r s had been violated ? 
 
 In all the Southern States, the stealing of 
 slaves is one of the highest species of statu- 
 tory felonies. In several of them it is pun- 
 ished with death; and the mildest punishment 
 for the crime in any of them, extends to hard 
 labor and penitentiary confinement. Every 
 one who entices away a slave, with intent to 
 deprive the owner of his services, and all 
 who aid and abet him as accessories before 
 the fact or after the fact, are made thieves 
 and felons by the laws, and shall suffer death, 
 or imprisonment at hard labor for life or for 
 years, according to the criminal laws of the 
 jurisprudence where the trials are to be had ! 
 Yet a Presbyterian church in the city ol 
 
 from the science of numbers, and based upon 
 the principles of population, we may not ap- 
 proximate it near enough for all the useful 
 ends for which such information is wanted. 
 To ascertain the maximum of the South ? s 
 losses, is more than I hope for, or shall aim. 
 at; but a minbaum, and one large enough to 
 startle and amaze both North and South, 
 (except the close observers,) and sure enough 
 to bring to it the assent of all candid minos 
 in both sections, I do aim at, and mean to 
 demonstrate and establish it, maugre the 
 doubtings of skeptics North or South. 
 
 My materials are accessible to everybody; 
 they are all contained in the United States 
 census, and the several enumerations of the 
 free negroes in the several States, (running 
 through a course of thirty years, commencing 
 in 1S10, ending in 1840,) will embrace the 
 
 New York, makes free its pews to these I entire range of the calculation. The mate- 
 fugitives from justice, and there in the pre- rials we have, then, are enumerations 
 
 oi 
 
 sence of the New York public, they detail this class of the population in each decennial 
 
cycle for these thirty years; and the materials 
 we want are, its aggregate increase^ and its 
 rate percent, of increase in each of the great 
 divisions of the country, the North, the 
 Middle, and Western, and the South, for 
 the whole time. 
 
 The principle and the mode of the opera- 
 tion may be unfolded in a trice : By taking 
 the six New England States, as most remote 
 from the slave States and less influenced by 
 accessions from their fugitive slaves, and 
 finding their rate per cent, of increase; and 
 then by taking the six original slave States, 
 where the free negroes of the Union dwell in 
 the largest numbers, and have thriven most, 
 and finding a rate per cent, of increase there; 
 the. comparison between the two ought to 
 give us a safe mean, to measure the aggie 
 
 and impart to the mean therefore, a far 
 hio-her rate per cent, for the natural increase 
 than the real facts, would huve shown, and 
 per consequence, exhibits the excess of free 
 negroes in the midland free States, over and 
 above the natural increase, far below what 
 it really is. 
 
 In the wry of general facts touching the 
 growth of the population of the United States, 
 I think these postulata may bs safely as- 
 sumed : 
 
 1. That the natural increase of the South- 
 ern slaves exceeds that of any other condition 
 of men on this continent. 
 
 2. That the general census cannot show 
 the fact, because it adds to the natural in- 
 crease of the white race here, the vast an- 
 nual accessions from foreign emigration; 
 
 gate natural increase in both sections Now, j and on the other hand, it allows nothing st 
 taking that mean and applying it to the all for these vast annual deductions from 
 .-.even Middle and Western States, (five | slave-numbers, which are made through pri- 
 6f which border upon, and the two others j vate emancipation, and escape and enfran- 
 ai'e most accessible to, the slave States,) | chisement at the North; and hence, the 
 we may fairly conclude that the excess of census gives the white race the precedence 
 
 free negroes found there over and above 
 that mean rate per cent, of the natural in- 
 crease, is made up wholly of fugitive slaves 
 from the slave States. I am aware that the 
 mean I have adopted is not strictly accurate, 
 but the North cannot complain of the inac- 
 curacy, as that inaccuracy consists entirely 
 in underrating the Soulh's losses, for (in 
 the absence of all other data) I was con- 
 strained to follow the census, and could make 
 no deductions therefore, from the natural 
 increase of the free negroes of New England, 
 of those large accessions which are annually 
 made to it from tha migrations of fugitive 
 slaves from the South; and for the same 
 reasons no deductions were made from the 
 natural increase of free negroes in the slave 
 States; of the still larger accessions made to 
 them from the heavy annual emancipations 
 of slaves. All these accessions from both sec- 
 tions consequently are cast into the account, 
 
 in natural increase. 
 
 3. This being so, and such the cause, that 
 the white population of the United Slates 
 about doubles itself in every period of two- 
 and-a-half decennial cycles, or twenty-five 
 years. 
 
 4. That the slave population of the United 
 States more than doubles itself in every 
 period of three decennial cycles, or thirty 
 years from the natural increase alone. 
 
 5. That the free negroes of the Southern 
 States double in about every period of three- 
 and-a-half decennial cycles, or thirty-five 
 years from the natural increase alone. 
 
 6. That the free negroes in the Northera 
 and Western States double in about every 
 period of four decennial cycles, or forty years 
 from the natural increase alone. 
 
 7. That the free negroes of the Southern 
 States are the most stable and least migra- 
 torv of any class of the population of the 
 
United States, if we except their migrations 
 to other slave States. 
 
 8. That considerably more of the free 
 negroes migrate from the free States to the 
 slave States, than from the slave States to 
 the free States. 
 
 9. That forty-nine fiftieths of all native ne- 
 groes of the slave States who are found in 
 the free States, are or were fugitive slaves 
 when they left the slave States. 
 
 With these preliminaries, I will now pre- 
 sent a table which I have prepared from the 
 Census-book of the United States, showing, 
 
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 ii 
 
 
 
 1st. The aggregate numbers of the free 
 »e?roes in the six New England States 
 
 from 1810 to 1840, (inclusive,) with their 
 aggregate rate per cent, of increase, as also 
 its rate per cent, per annum. 
 
 2d. The aggregate numbers of the free 
 negroes in the six original slave States 
 between the same periods, with their rate 
 per cent, of increase in the aggregate and 
 per annum. 
 
 3d. The seperate as well as the aggregate 
 numbers of the free negroes in the seven 
 midland free States, as well as the aggregate 
 rate per cent, of increase for thirty years, 
 the rates per cent, per annum for the 
 whole and for each State. 
 
 I have thus put it in the power of all to 
 yerify or to falsify (as the case may be) my 
 data and deductions, from the details of the 
 Census rolls, and the reasonings to be drawn 
 from them. I earnestly invite all such to 
 look into this table, and scrutinize it and 
 ponder on it. There is scarcely a man in a 
 thousand who pries into, or realizes the pro- 
 gressive and intolerable wrongs and injuries 
 which the South suffers yearly — monthly — ■ 
 daily — from these furtive and felonious ag- 
 gressions upon her property-rights, but those 
 who do, have made an aggregate of losses 
 far heavier than mine. 
 
 The increase of population in the United 
 States is unexampled in all the world. Even 
 bating its accessions from foreign emigration, 
 and it is still without a rival. As it is, and 
 ill have said, it doubles itself in 25 years. 
 The rate of increase, therefore, is four per 
 cent, per annum. Now " tum^ to the ^ free 
 negroesj of ^New k England. g They have 
 dwindled and dwindled, until they have al- 
 most reached a stand still. Their annual 
 increase amounts to but one-tenth of one 
 per cent! They could not double them- 
 selves, at that rate, short of four hundred 
 years! The South's fugitive slaves, which 
 N"ew England is known to shelter and free 
 annually, without compensating their own- 
 ers, (independently of the large numbers 
 
she aids in escaping to Canada,) more than 
 accounts for her entire annual increase, and 
 consequently shows her native negro popu- 
 lation gradually wearing out and wasting 
 away. 
 f Even the free negroes of the six original 
 slave States of Delaware, Maryland,"Virginia, 
 North Carolina, South Carolina, and Geor- 
 gia, only show an annual increase of two 
 per cent., but the deficiency is fully ac- 
 counted for in the migrations of free negroes 
 from the old to the new slave States. 
 
 But turning from these commcn-place de- 
 tails, and casting our eyes upon the columns 
 portraying the progress of free negroism, in 
 those of the free States which border on, 
 •r are almost equally accessible to the slave 
 , States, and lo ! what wonders and contrasts 
 strike and astonish us ! The very minimum 
 of increase in the seven middle free States, 
 reaches to 3 3-4 per cent, per annum, while 
 Massachusetts, with her great free negro 
 thoroughfare of Boston, reaches no higher 
 than to seven-eighths of one per cent, per 
 annum! Why, at the rate of 3 3-4 per 
 cent per annum, they would double every 
 twenty-seven years, and it is but one 
 quarter of one per cent, per annum less 
 than the rate of increase of the white popu- 
 lation of the United States, and falls but 
 that much short therefore, of doubling itself 
 in every twenty-five years ! So much for 
 the minimum of increase. 
 
 But what are we to say of the maximum 
 of increase in these States, of this the most 
 sluggish and unthrifty class of people within 
 our borders ? On turning to the rolls for 
 Illinois and Michigan, I found these States 
 had been absorbed and deeply intent upon 
 the manufacturing of free negroes, and in- 
 creasing their store at the amazing rate of 
 upwards of sixteen per cent, per annum, 
 each, and as no community of living moth- 
 ers ever yet gave births in quadruples, it 
 was plain that these fabled procreations were 
 
 but the spoils of felonious plunder, and wil- 
 der the morals of the Free-soilers, that num- 
 bers give law, and thefts give title, numer- 
 ous and valuable slaves are enticed from 
 their owners ; and, in cssociation with the 
 vilest and worthliest that shame the earth, 
 they are hidden away in the chrysallis as 
 fugitives from labor, but soon to emerge and 
 take wing as fugitives from justice ! Only 
 to think of an increase of sixteen per cent, 
 per annum, the quadruple of that of the 
 United States, and which would double the 
 free negro population of those States every 
 six-and-a-quarter years ! But why should I 
 dwell on these cases, when there stands 
 Ohio augmenting her free negroes out of the 
 South's fugitive slaves, until her rate of in- 
 crease per annum, has actually attained to 
 27 per cent., which would nearly double them 
 seven times in twenty-five years, or more than 
 double them every four years ; and even 
 such a marvel is lost in the wonder that 
 there stands Indiana by her side, conspic- 
 uous over all, in the unexampled augmenta- 
 tion of her free negroes up to 62 1-3 per 
 cent, per annum ! At this rate of increase, 
 instead of doubling like the population of 
 the United States, once in 25 years, the- 
 free negro population of Indiana doubles, 
 and has [doubled itself in that time, fifteen 
 times, and in a word, doubles itself every 
 other other year, with 12 1-3 per cent, per 
 annum of increase to spare ! 
 
 These vast augmentations of free negroes- 
 in these ominous localities, will have one 
 good effect all over the land. They will 
 unmask this enormity to all men's gaze, and 
 point to the materials out of which they 
 have been wrought. None can doubt where 
 the great body of these materials came from. 
 Had all the free negroes cf New England 
 been emptied into the lap of these midland 
 States, they would not have accounted for a 
 tythe of the augmentation above the natural 
 increase. It is not a possible case, that that 
 
population, and in that region, should have 
 increased by the natural and usual means, 
 at as high a rate annually as three per cent. 
 It is scarcely credible that it could have 
 reached two per cent, there, and by these 
 means ; and it passes rny belief, that the in- 
 crease ever did or could have reached two- 
 and-a-half per cent, there. Nevertheless, 
 that I may have my data and deductions 
 free from any possible cavil, I shall waive 
 the lesser mean I designed to derive from 
 comparing the rates of annual increase be- 
 tween New England and the original slave 
 States, and adopt the rate of two-and-a- 
 half per cent, per annum as the mean for 
 ascertaining the augmentations of free ne- 
 groes in the midland States, over and above 
 the usual and natural means : That is to say, 
 that after allowing two-and-a-half per cent. 
 for the natural and usual increase, marking 
 all augmentations beyond it as excess, and 
 marking that excess itself, as a true exponent 
 of the real numbers of the fugitive slaves 
 within the designated localities. 
 
 I will not elaborate this paper by showing 
 the process by detail. No one need put 
 •his faith, either in my skill or my fairness. 
 The figures are before him, and he must 
 cypher out the result for himself. 
 
 I find the excessive augmentations of free 
 negroes (fugitive slaves) beyond the natural 
 and usual means, in the States now to be 
 named, to be as follows : 
 
 New York 3 5-6 per cent, 
 excess over 2 1-2 per ct. 5,734 fugitive Stdoes. 
 
 New Jersey 5 1-2 per cent.; 
 
 excess over 2 1-2 per ct. 7,221 do. do 
 
 Pennsylvania 3-3-4 perct.; 
 
 excess over 2 1-2 per ct. 9,602 do. do. 
 
 Ohio 27 per cent.; excess 
 
 over 2 1-2 per cent. 14,033 do. do. 
 
 Indiana 62 3-4 per ct.; ex- 
 cess over 2 1-2 per cent. 6,502 do. do. 
 
 Illinois 16 1-4 per cent.; ex- 
 cess over 2 1-2 per cent. 2,535 do. do. 
 
 Michigan 16 2-3 per cent.; 
 
 excess over 2 1-2 per ct. 497 do. do. 
 
 Total fugitive slaves in the 
 
 above estimates - 46,224 in 30 year-. 
 A.dd the estimated number 
 
 of fusrithe slaves from 
 
 1840 to 1850, upon the ratio 
 
 shown bet. 1830 & 1840 15,400 in 10 years. 
 
 Total fugitive slaves from 
 
 1810 to 1850, - - 61,624 in 40 years. 
 
 Number of fugitive slaves 
 escaping to the States 
 annually, - 1,540 
 
 Having thus ascertained the number of 
 fugitive slaves escaping into these States, 
 the next thing to be done is, to assign them. 
 a rateable value ; and, it should be noted, 
 that in nineteen cases out of twenty, the 
 fugitives are the most valuable descriptioa 
 of slaves, young men, artizans, mechanics — 
 the intelligent, the robust, the healthy. After 
 striking ofl 50 per cent, of the present aver- 
 age market rate of slaves of that desciip- 
 tion, $450 per head will be found a very- 
 moderate valuation, and will show the'- 
 losses aggregately and annually as follows: 
 
 To 61,624 fugitive slaves valued at 
 
 $450 each, - $27,730 S09 
 
 To the loss annually of 1,540 fugitive 
 
 slaves at $45, each, - - - #693,03* 
 
 I believe the data which have formed the 
 basis of all my calculations and estimates, 
 have been moderate to a fault. Just, I at* 
 sure they are, and fairer they could not be. 
 But it has just occurred to me that New 
 York and New Jersey, manumitted a num- 
 ber of slaves in the course of the thirty 
 years between 1810 and 1S40, and Penn- 
 sylvania some also. 1 have heard, indeed, 
 that a large proportion of these were re- 
 moved to the South, before their terms ot 
 manumission took effect, and that their 
 bondage, or at least their service, continuing 
 there, their domicils in these States were 
 lost. Be that as it may, 1 am not willing 
 to leave these estimates to distrust, so t» 
 guard all possible mistakes, I shall now 
 strike one-fifth, or twenty per centum from 
 the estimates of both the aggregate and an- 
 nual losses, reducing the former to $22,- 
 184,640, and the latter to $5-13,400; and 
 ■ (Tor good measure) casting into the account, 
 [New England's share of liability to the 
 
South during the same period, for the like 
 aggressions, and not less than five hundred 
 slaves, (valued at $225,000) whom the 
 North assists annually to escape to Canada 
 
 Let us pause. Here is an array of losses 
 reaching up to 22 millions of dollars ! Who 
 lost it ? The South ! Who caused it ? The 
 North ! What is it ? A debt ! Who 
 owns it ? The South ! Who owes it ? The 
 North ! How did it originate ? From 
 spoliations to that amount of the South's 
 property. Were the spoliations prompted 
 by any necessities of State or of circum- 
 stance ? By neither : The aggressions 
 were both wilful and wanton. The North 
 covctcJ what she did not want : She took 
 what was not her own : She sacrificed what 
 ■belonged to others : The motive of the 
 emprize was not the thrift of the spoilers 1 
 but the wrong and injury of the plundered. 
 
 I have shown the vast amount of slave pro- 
 perty which has thus been taken from the 
 slave States, Irom reliable data : I have 
 shown what it was worth at a very moderate 
 valuation, and it stands proven as a subsisting 
 and valid debt, amounting to $22,18-4,640. 
 Who are liable for the payment r Those 
 who took the property — those who received 
 it — those who kept it — those who gave it 
 protection — and those who evaded or resist- 
 ed its reclamation : The citizens of the Iree 
 States are liable, — the governments of those 
 States are liable, — or in one comprehensive 
 word, the North is liable. There is not a 
 legal forum in Christendom, where such a 
 claim, for such a cause, with equal proofs, 
 between man and man, or nation and nation 
 would not be recognized and enforced. Why 
 it has been done " time out of mind,' 1 — and 
 the claiming and recovery of similar claims 
 along the thoroughfares of the world, consti- 
 tute at this time the current business of men 
 and of natinos. What but the foreign claims 
 of her citizens prompted Great Britain to 
 prowl over the seas like a huge Leviathan 
 
 Tax-Collector, and menace aggressive war 
 in the ports of Venezuela, Nicaragua and 
 Honduras, of Greece, Tuscany and Leghorn? 
 What was it during General Jackson's Pre- 
 sidency, which brought the United States 
 and France to the very brink of war, but the 
 wavering hesitancy of Louis Philippe and the 
 French Chambers, to execute the treaty of 
 Paris, providing indemnity for French spolia- 
 tions upon American Commerce, under the 
 Berlin and Milan Decrees ? Where in alL 
 South America have we a Minister whose 
 whole functions of embassy are not engrossed 
 with the trials and drudgeries of an ac- 
 countant, in debating and adjusting at the 
 bar of nations, the spoliated property-rights 
 of American citizens ? What originated and 
 aggravated up to the moment of rupture, the 
 war with Mexico, more than her seizures,, 
 | detentions and confiscations of American pro- 
 perty, and what but the national protection, 
 due to the property-rights of all Americaa 
 citizens of all sections, has instituted the 
 commission now sitting here, for the adjust- 
 ment of American claims for Mexican spolia- 
 tions ? And what is it at this moment that 
 threatens our peaceful relations with Portugal, 
 but the property-rights of our citizens, invol- 
 ved in the belligerent capture of an Ameri- 
 can privateer, while under Portuguese pro- 
 tection in the harbour of Fayal, near forty- 
 years ago r Now amid this vast and diver- 
 sified mass of American claims, there i? not 
 among them all, a single one juster of right, 
 clearer of fact, or more valid of law, than that 
 of the South upon the North, for the spolia- 
 tions and confiscations referred to and estab- 
 lished in this paper, and in amount it far ex- 
 ceeds the ichole of them put together ! 
 
 This then being a just debt, in the Soath's 
 name, I demand to know, why, like all other 
 just debts, it should not be paid ? Two 
 reasons have been given by the. ISorth why 
 it should not : 
 
 One rt ason is, that slaves are not property^ 
 
10 
 
 and are not the basis therefore of valuation 
 and indebtedness. But besides that, Con- 
 gress has repeatedly assessed their value and 
 taxed them as property, and sold them as such 
 under executions, the North is estopped from 
 taking this ground by her own act. In 
 1815, (during the war with Great Britain) 
 she, in common with the South, insisted that 
 Great Britain should either make restitution 
 of, or payment for, several hundred slaves as 
 -property, which she had carried away from 
 the slave States during her investment of the 
 Southern coast. And how did Great Britain, 
 the leading Abolition power in the world, 
 deal with such a proposal ? She received 
 it with respect, acknowledged it to be just, 
 and made full payment for the slaves, with 
 interest for their detention, and thus fully re- 
 cognized the property-rights of Southerners in 
 their slaves, even against their adverse claims 
 *tnd possessions as belligerents. The North 
 •committed herself to that proposal by making- 
 it, and she ratified it by receiving payment 
 for the property with interest from the Brit- 
 ish Exchequer. 
 
 The other reason is, that the nature of our 
 •Union is incompatible with the enforcement 
 of such a demand. Is it ? Then the Union 
 must be incompatible with its own principles, 
 'for the Union is itself but an incident and 
 dependency of the Constitution, and the sur- 
 render and delivery of fugitive slaves by the 
 States they are found in, was one of the fun- 
 damental conditions of its formation ; and 
 those who have not shut their eyes to the 
 gloomy portents which sadden the times, 
 *nust know, that the observance of its provi- 
 sions will be insisted on as the fundamental 
 condition of its continuance. The North 
 -would have us believe, that the preservation 
 of that Union is an object of her first and pro- 
 foundest regards ; and lo ! she commends it 
 to the South's support and affections, by in- 
 sisting that while it lasts, she can despoil the 
 South of her property ad libitum and be ex- 
 empt from restitution or liability, while, if it 
 
 were at an end, the North, like all the civili- 
 zed nations of the earth, would be bound and 
 constrained to make full restitution or pay- 
 ment, under the grave penalties of national 
 dishonor and the chances of war ! Without 
 a treaty stipulation for the extradition of fugi- 
 tives from labor, in derogation of the doc- 
 trine of the British constitution that there 
 can be no property in man, in disparagement 
 of her belligerent rights as a captor within 
 her enemy's jurisdiction, — behold Great 
 Britain (in conformity with the Consuetu- 
 dinary Law of nations) attesting her rever- 
 ence for the rights of private property, amid 
 the waste and confiscations of offensive war, 
 and rating and paying for our captured and 
 deported slaves at their full value ! Gainsay 
 it who may, that self-despoiling example, so 
 meet for observance, so worthy of praise and 
 so just in itself, has drawn to it the sponta- 
 neous concurrence of all nations, and made 
 itself the law of the world in peace and in 
 war. 
 
 Such is the sanction and inviolability se- 
 cured to private property-rights by a com- 
 mon consent and the reverenced usages be- 
 tween all nations, and without a treaty 
 stipulation to enforce their performance. — 
 In all Christendom there is not an exception 
 to be brought against these usages, — not a 
 question to be raised upon th?se rights of 
 reclamation — but the exception to be found, 
 God help us ! in our own sovereign sister- 
 hood of States ! Yes ! — here, where a thou- 
 sand glorious deeds and remembrances bound 
 and still holds us together in Federative 
 Union, and whom common interests and 
 affections have endeared to one another, — 
 here where we have a Treaty stipulation, or 
 rather something far better and weightier — 
 a Constitutional Pact, obliging us to the 
 
 DELIVERY AND RESTITUTION OF FUGITIVE. 
 
 Slaves, — here, where that stipulation has 
 formed and yet forms one of the main condi- 
 tions of cur Federal Status in the past, 
 
11 
 
 and now, — yes here, where we fully recog- 
 nize the sacredness of the rights of private 
 property, (being foreign property) through 
 all the scath and waste of war, — we who 
 have given to the nations, through the 
 whole course of the Mexican war, — a thou- 
 sand telling and glorious testimonies of our 
 national appreciation and reverence for that 
 principle, yet the moment it is brought home 
 and applied to our property-interests with 
 one another — the moment it becomes the 
 basis if a debt between the North and South, 
 the authority of all precedents is cast aside, 
 the principle is renounced, restitution is with- 
 held, all payment refused, the aggressions go 
 hen, the fugitives increase, and our rights oi 
 property, like our rights of migration and set- 
 tlement and sovereignty in reference to our 
 Federal domains and distant sea-boards, are 
 are subjected to the caprices, repulsions, and 
 exactions of the law of the strongest ! The 
 Constitution guaranties to the South protec- 
 tion and security for her property-rights, but 
 the nature of the Union forbids their enforce- 
 ment ! According to this, the terms of the 
 Constitution give us all we can claim, while 
 the action of the Constitution takes all of them 
 away ! — With the Constitution, reclamations 
 are impracticable and the aggressions must 
 continue ; without the Constitution, the recla- 
 mations could be made, and the aggressions 
 must cease ! Such seem the obvious deduc- 
 tions from the Noith's reasons why the South 
 should cling to the connection, and submit to 
 her oppressions ! 
 
 With aggregate losses in fugitive slaves 
 in the course of the last 40 years amounting 
 to $22,000,100, with progressive losses at 
 the rate of $550,C00 per annum, the South 
 has come up to Congress at the present ses- 
 sion, and (as every native son who loves 
 and honors her hopes) for the last time, and 
 •ffered to buy her peace and stabilitate the 
 Union through a surrender to the North of 
 ker liabiliiLs for the $22,000,000, upou 
 
 the simple condition that she would give 
 prompt and faithful effect to the provisions ®£ 
 the Constitution, desist from all future ag- 
 gressions in aiding the escape of fugitive 
 slaves, and remove all obstructions to their 
 lawful capture and recovery in the Free 
 States. In the early days of the session, the 
 matter was brought into debate; the Southern 
 members were, kindly listened to, and all 
 candid Northern numbers admitted that the 
 complaints were just, that the grievances 
 were serious and weighty, and that effective 
 remedies ought to be applied. A bill was 
 introduced, but had made little progress 
 before down came from the North an ava- 
 lanche of petitions and remonstrances, castinc- 
 every impediment in its way. Soon, the 
 Committee of Thirteen reeled under the 
 blight of the infection, and by some mystic 
 mutations of positions, which remains a. 
 sealed book to the uninitiated, behold ! the 
 South loses her place as a Complainant be- 
 fore the Committee, and takes the attitude 
 of a Defendant to the North's complaints* 
 Thus she emerged into day from the Com- 
 mittee-room, and thus she stands now.— 
 There is the Committee's report, and there 
 are the two sections relating to the reclama- 
 tions of fugitive slaves; and it is plain cposs, 
 their face that the whole aim of both is to 
 protect fugitives from spurious claims. Every 
 one can examine them for himself. Id© 
 not mean to enter at all into the subject here- . 
 but no candid man can deny, but that these 
 sections impose additional burthens, expen- 
 ses and delays upon claimants; the one sec- - 
 tion cumulating the proofs without cumulat- 
 ing the remedies, and the other clogging the 
 way by cumulating jury-trials upon the jury=- 
 trials provided by the States in pari materia,, 
 Both sections therefore are obstructions, net- 
 helps to the reclamations of fugitive slaves^,. 
 and multiply the chances of their ultimate 
 escape. But how came the sections there?- 
 Most obviously, the South did not want thexny 
 
12 
 
 wrongs, and implored from the justice of 
 Congress, the enactment of effective provi- 
 sions to enforce the plain guarantees of the 
 Constitution for the protection and security 
 of the property-rights of the citizens ! And 
 what is devised as the great healing measure 
 of remedial justice ? A reference of all the 
 cases to fanatic juries impannelled from the 
 very sympathizers who have prompted the 
 injury and wrought the wrong, and whose 
 plighted principle of organized fellowship it 
 is, that man can have no lawful property in 
 man, and the only issue to the jury is, whether 
 the captured fugitive is the slave properly of 
 (.he person who claims him ! Why the whole 
 thing is but a mockery and an insult ; a 
 mockery, because the verdict would be but 
 a lesfal form for announcing a foregone con- 
 clusion ; and an insult, because it aims at the 
 extinction of the right it professes to secure. 
 The only grievances brought to the nctice of 
 Congress (and they of long standing and 
 rapidly on the increase) were the practices 
 of citizens from the free States enticing slaves 
 from their owners, protecting, concealing and 
 succouring them, screening them from arrest, 
 rescuing them from capture, and subjecting 
 the claimants in quest of them to the harrass- 
 ments and perils of mobs and murders. 
 These grievances are real and acknowledged 
 so to be, and juries have no functions appro- 
 priate to their prevention. They could not I 
 be needed to inspect the title papers of 
 claimants and to revise the decisions of Judges 
 
 and the North had no need for them, for 
 Mr. Clay declared in the Senate that every 
 member of the Committee from the Free 
 States had stated, that they had never heard 
 of an instance ab urbe condila to the present 
 day, in which a fugitive had been claimed 
 as a slave, who had not been proven to be 
 such. This sort of legislation can deceive 
 nobody who will think for himself. Without 
 a single fraudulent claim made in CO years, 
 there was no mischief quoad hoc to remedy, 
 and lie has more acuteness than I have, who 
 thinks that these, sections were adapted to 
 advance the right and insure the reclamation. 
 But bad as these sections are, and even 
 should the South again give way as afore- 
 time, would they content the arrogant and 
 all-grasping North ? Not they ! A remedy 
 rather that strikes at the root of the right and 
 subverts it, pleases her taste and befits her 
 resolves, and nothing short of it can. Ac- 
 cordingly a jury trial at the vicinage of the 
 capture and not at the vic'nage of the flight 
 is the remedy devised, and with scarcely a 
 disguise, devised for the manumission of the 
 man and the confiscation of the property. 
 And who have the Free soilers found to lead 
 on this inglorious assault upon the national 
 jurisprudence and the constitutional rights of 
 the South ? A statesman in front among the 
 foremost, an eminent jurist, one of the great 
 
 lights of the land, who has made the ancient 
 
 t 
 Black Letter and English Common Law, the 
 
 study of a life-time ; who has held with Sir 
 
 Edward Coke and all the Feudalists from I or Commissioners ordering the delivery of 
 
 earliest manhood, through a distinguished I fugitive slaves, for Mr. Webster bears testi- 
 
 career, up to a mature old age, that in all . mony, that never in a single instance in sixty 
 
 trials for life or for freedom, the vicinage of 
 the facts must be the forum of the trial ; I 
 mean the scholar, thejuris-consult,the states- 
 man, Senator Webster of Massachusetts. 
 What a contrast is here, to the lofty eminence j wanted for the security of claimants against 
 
 years, has any one of those officials com- 
 mitted a mistake in surrendering a fugitive 
 to a claimant who was not a slave, and not 
 Jury-trials then not being 
 
 his owner. 
 
 he stood on but a few months ago, when in the 
 presence of the nation, he arraigned the 
 
 the obstructions to reclamations, not being 
 needed for the security of fusritiw. slaves from 
 
 $SJjQXth?s aggressions, plead the Soutli&iithe arts and devices of a simulated owner- 
 
13 
 
 ship, can be insisted on or desired but for 
 the one lawless purpose, of freeing the slave 
 and despoiling the master, in defiance ot the 
 proofs and in breach of the Constitution ! ll 
 may be said, indeed, that juries in the free 
 States have occasionally given exemplary 
 damages against persons who have rescued 
 fugitive slaves from capture, and so they 
 have ; but that makes a very different issue, 
 in their eyes, fr:m that which shall involve 
 the liberty or slavery for a life time of a hu- 
 man being before them, pleading for freedom 
 and imploring their sympathies and mercy, 
 which can reach the heart and sway 
 
 and mischief, will combine to take our pro- 
 perty from us at the rate of upwards of 
 $550,000 per annum ! 
 
 The case is unexampled in all the world. 
 No civilized people have ever before, and for 
 so long a series of years, oppressed another 
 as the North have oppressed the South, and 
 none upon the face of the earth have sub- 
 mitted, or would have submitted as the South 
 has. In every year of such unprovoked ag- 
 gressions, the men of the Revolution would 
 have found a justification if not a necessity 
 for prompt and bloody revolt — if their gal- 
 lant and victorious resistance to slighter 
 
 its impulses. Rest assured, that a jury's wrongs, against infinitely vaster odds than 
 verdict in a free State, surrendering up now contrast the military strength and re- 
 
 a fugitive slave to bondage for life, will 
 be one of those marvelous novelties, 
 which no one now alive is likely to wit- 
 ness. I doubt rne much, if it be ever put to 
 the test; for what Southerner of sense, would 
 throw away his money in so hopeless and 
 perilous an emprise, as the pursuit and 
 rescue of his slave from the hands of the 
 spoiler, through a verdict from jurors who 
 bold, that a man's freedom is a gift he was 
 born with, and which 111 the paper titles in 
 the world could neither disprove nor take 
 away. Yet all the appearances are, that 
 without such a verdict, he cannot have his 
 slaves, for abolition arts, and mobs, and mur- 
 ders, have long since made the provisions 
 cf the existing law impotent for service and 
 a mockery to claimants ; and so long as the 
 South will endure her oppressions, Congress 
 will pass no law upon the subject, which 
 shall not be a nullity on its face, through the 
 forgone verdicts of enfranchisement it will 
 prognosticate and point to, from the free soil 
 juries. The fugitives will increase, the 
 perils of capture will multiply, pursuits 
 will be rarer and reclamations out of the 
 question. The debt of $22,000,000 will 
 remain unpaid, and the citizens of the free 
 States, without the shadow of a pretext or of 
 
 sources of the North and South, is proof of 
 a spirit that would not brook oppression, and 
 dare all for their rights, whatever the risk. 
 Nor is there a trace in oughtthat history has 
 taken charge of in the career of our brethren 
 of the North, which proves or suggests that 
 they would have borne with a tythe of the 
 oppressions which the South has submitted to 
 from them All looks otherwise from the 
 lights that are before us. Shay's rebellion 
 in New England — the whisky insurrection 
 of Pennsylvania — the stealthy treasons in 
 embryo at Hartford, amply attest their aptness 
 for resistance and revolt even against their 
 own brethren, wherever they can make even 
 fancied aggressions put on the semblance of 
 real wrongs. Why, what are they doing 
 now ? Are they not urging on the Govern- 
 ment to the point of rupture with a foreign 
 country, to recover the paltry value of a 
 yankee privateer, which Great Britain seized 
 in the port of Fayal forty years ago ? Por- 
 tugal never laid hands upon the property, nor 
 connived at the aggession — nor consented to 
 it. She was neutral to the war — neutral to the 
 capture, and powerless to prevent it. And if 
 a mere constructive liability for the payment 
 of $30,000, could thus rouse the North's 
 ire to the fighting point, who could predesti- 
 
 a use to apply it to, but in mere wantonness nate her foibearance when coming to the 
 
14 
 
 knowledge, that Southerners, year by year, 
 were prowling past her borders and driving 
 off her flocks and herds to the value of $550,- 
 000 per annum ? Who could doubt her al- 
 ternatives : payment for the property and 
 •cessation of the wrongs, or civil war ? No 
 man North of Mason and Dixon's line, but 
 realizes as he reads this, that one or the 
 other would be inevitable ; and no man 
 South of it but would say, that her alterna- 
 tives were just, and applaud the spirit that 
 resolved them. 
 
 If the North would not have submitted, 
 and ought not to have submitted to similar 
 aggressions, why has the South submitted ? 
 Is she less valiant than the North ? If she is, 
 the North must know it, for they stood and 
 strived together through the Revolution — 
 through the war of 1812 — and more recently 
 upon the battle-fields of Mexico, and I am 
 quite willing that the North should name the 
 occasions, when the South was out of front 
 where the perils flew thickest, and when the 
 South gave way, where the North stood firm. 
 Ordoes it result from the South's concious- 
 -iness of inferiority in the arts and appliances 
 tof-suceessful resistance ? The North will fin- 
 tbe South's answer in the masterly address 
 to the Nashville Convention, by a Southern 
 soldier of the highest order of military genius 
 and powers of combination, (General Felix 
 Huston, of Louisiana,) upon the military ca- 
 pacities and resources of the South, with the 
 demonstrations he brings from all history and 
 every age, of the mighty elements of martial 
 strength inherent in the slavery institution, 
 :rom the military necessity of having eight 
 .laborers at home to support each soldier in 
 the field, with the moral impossibility of 
 serious insurrection from the want of all con- 
 cert, the slaves' ignorance of each other and 
 of the arts and implements of war, &c. &c. 
 When the facts and reasonings of that power- 
 ful pamphlet, shall have found its way into 
 the North's hands (as it shortly will) the 
 
 North will stand my sponser for the predic- 
 tion, that, whether the Union stands or falls, 
 no man now living will witness an attempt 
 from the North to coerce the South inte 
 terms, by crossing her borders in martial 
 array, and Congressmen will think twice be- 
 fore again menacing the South, with the 
 coming of those fiery regiments, which will 
 either never get there, or never get away, a* 
 may best beseem the regiments themselves. 
 The alternatives will be these: be theirs' 
 the choice ! 
 
 No, no, Messieurs, all attributions of the 
 South's forbearance to the state of the South'* 
 nerves, or the South's means, are wide, im- 
 measurably wide of the maik. Hi<1 that 
 been all, the North would have had a chance 
 of shivering a lance with her long ago. — 
 The same cause that restrained her hitherto, 
 restrains her now, an overweening love of 
 the Union, which if it shall last much longer 
 and bring her no redress, will bring her te 
 ruin and cover her with shame ! It is amaz- 
 ing, it is alarming, yet it is admirable, te 
 pause and ponder on a love of Union so pro- 
 found and reverential and abiding. Any 
 other people under the Sun, victimized an4 
 aggrieved as the South has been in the 
 Union's name, would have shivered it te 
 atoms from the might which slumbers in her 
 soldierly arm ! Had the North loved the 
 Union as the South does, she would never 
 have imperilled it, by degrading her witk 
 trials, so wounding to her honor and so oner- 
 ous to be borne with. Had the South show* 
 no sounder and deeper attachment to the 
 Union than the North has, that Union wouli 
 long have been numbered with the M thing* 
 that were." To all seeming, the North's 
 attachment to the Union, is neither deeper 
 nor holier than the thrift she derives from it, 
 and her wanton injuries and ceaseless revil- 
 ings of her brethren, what are they but 
 proofs of it? With the South, it is a sea- 
 timent and a passion, and what are her 
 
15 
 
 wrongs and her forbearance but the proofs 
 of it ? Will the South bear longer with her 
 wrongs and with more from her oppressors ? 
 •God of his forecast knows ! She may; but 
 we bless Providence and trust, she may not ! 
 With States as with men, submission has its 
 bounds. It is best to respect them. It is 
 perilous to pass them. When oppression's 
 cup is full, it will hold no more : It will bear 
 
 what it has, but a single drop besides causes' 
 an overflow and carries away with it and 
 spreads around ten thousand drops which un- 
 molested, would have turned to vapor and 
 have passed away, but that single drop does 
 all the mischief, and aptly compares witli 
 the last ounce of the burthen, which broke 
 the back of the camel ! 
 
 Randolph of Roanoke. 
 
 

 t d j nn