New Orleans, Mobile,
Savannah, Charleston, Natchez, or St. Louis, he would be torn in
pieces by the citizens with one accord, and that if any one should
attempt to bring his murderers to punishment, he would be torn in
pieces also. The editors of southern newspapers openly vaunt, that
every abolitionist who sets foot in their soil, shall, if he be
discovered, be hung at once, without judge or jury. What mockery to
quote the _letter of the law_ in those states, to show that
abolitionists would have secured to them the legal protection of an
impartial trial!

Before the objector can make out his case, that the life of the slave
is protected by the law, he must not only show that the _words of the
law_ grant him such protection, but that such a state of public
sentiment exists as will carry out the provisions of the law in their
true spirit. Any thing short of this will be set down as mere prating
by every man of common sense. It has been already abundantly shown in
the preceding pages, that the public sentiment of the slaveholding
states toward the slaves is diabolical. Now, if there were laws in
those states, the _words_ of which granted to the life of the slave
the same protection granted to that of the master, what would they
avail? ACTS constitute protection; and is that public sentiment which
makes the slave 'property,' and perpetrates hourly robbery and
batteries upon him, so penetrated with a sense of the sacredness of
his right to life, that it will protect it at all hazards, and drag to
the gallows his OWNER, if he take the life of his own _property_? If
it be asked, why the penalty for killing a slave is not a mere _fine_
then, if his life is not really regarded as sacred by public
sentiment--we answer, that formerly in most, if not in all the slave
states, the murder of a slave _was_ punished by a mere fine. This was
the case in South Carolina till a few years since. Yes, as late as
1821, in the state of South Carolina, which boasts of its chivalry and
honor, at least as loudly as any state in the Union, a slaveholder
might butcher his slave in the most deliberate manner--with the most
barbarous and protracted torments, and yet not be subjected to a
single hour's imprisonment--pay his fine, stride out of the court and
kill another--pay his fine again and butcher another, and so long as
he paid to the state, cash down, its own assessment of damages,
without putting it to the trouble of prosecuting for it, he mi