n declared his freedom--in vain he named six witnesses
whom he swore could prove his freedom--in vain he implored for a delay
of ONE HOUR. He was sent off as a slave, guarded, at the expense of
the United States treasury, to his pretended master in Maryland, who
honestly refused to receive him. The judge had made a mistake (!) and
had sent a free man instead of a slave.

This vile law, although of course receiving the sanction of the
Democrats, it being a bid for the Presidency, was a device of the Whig
party, and could not have been carried but by the co-operation of
Webster, Clay, and Fillmore. As if to enhance the value of the bid,
the Administration affected a desire to baptise it in northern blood,
by making resistance to the law, a crime to be punished with DEATH.
The hustling of an officer, and the consequent escape of an arrested
fugitive, were declared, by the Secretary of State, to be a _levying
of war against the United States_--of course an act of HIGH TREASON,
to be expiated on the gallows; and the rioters at Christiana were
prosecuted for HIGH TREASON, in pursuance of orders forwarded from
Washington. This wretched sycophancy won no favor from the
slaveholders, and the result of the abominable and absurd prosecution
only brought on the authors and advocates of the law fresh obloquy.
When men obtain some rich and splendid prize, by their wrong-doing,
many admire their boldness and dexterity, but foolish, profitless
wickedness ensures only contempt. The northern Whigs, in doing
obeisance to the slave power, sinned against their oft-repeated and
solemn professions and pledges. They sinned in the expectation of
thereby electing a President, and enjoying the patronage he would
dispense. Most bitterly were these men disappointed, first in the
candidate selected, and next in the result of the election. The party
has been beaten to death, and it died unhonored and unwept. Let the
Fugitive Slave Law be its epitaph. Truly the Whig politicians were
"snared in the work of their own hands."

Certain fashionable Divines deemed it expedient to second the efforts
of the politicians in catching slaves, by talking from their pulpits
about Hebrew slavery, and the reverence due to the "powers that be
ordained of God." Yet the injunctions of the fugitive law were so
obviously at variance with the "HIGHER LAW" of justice and mercy which
these gentlemen were required by their Divine Master to inculcate,
that "cotton divinity"