pect such magnanimity then,
Mr. Charles G. Loring. But of what avail was all this before such a
Commissioner? Thomas Sims was declared "a chattel personal to all
intents, uses, and purposes whatsoever." After it became plain that he
would be decreed a slave, the poor victim of Boston kidnappers asked
one boon of his counsel, "I cannot go back to Slavery," said he, "give
me a knife, and when the Commissioner declares me a slave I will stab
myself to the heart, and die before his eyes! I will not be a slave."
The knife was withheld! At the darkest hour of the night Mayor Bigelow
and Marshal Tukey, suitable companions, admirably joined by nature as
by vocation, with two or three hundred police-men armed, some with
bludgeons, some with drawn swords and horse pistols, took the poor boy
out of his cell, chained, weeping, and bore him over the spot where,
on the 5th of March, 1770, the British tyrant first shed New England
blood; by another spot where your fathers and mine threw to the ocean
the taxed tea of the oppressor. They put him on board a vessel, the
"_Acorn_," and carried him off to eternal bondage. "And this is
Massachusetts liberty!" said he, as he stepped on board. Boston sent
her Delegates to escort him back, and on the 19th of April, 1851, she
delivered him up to his tormentors in the jail at Savannah, where he
was scourged till human nature could bear no more, while his captors
were feasted at the public cost. Seventy-six years before there was
another 19th of April, also famous!

(4.) Then came the examination and "trial" of the Shadrach Rescuers in
February and the following months. Some of these trials took place
before his Honor Judge Peleg Sprague. Therefore, you will allow me,
Gentlemen, to refresh your memories with a word or two respecting the
antecedents of this Judge--his previous history.

In 1835 the abolition of Slavery in the British West Indies and the
efforts of the friends of Freedom in the Northern States, excited
great alarm at the South, lest the "peculiar institution" should
itself be brought into peril. Fear of a "general insurrection of the
slaves" was talked about and perhaps felt. The mails were opened in
search of "incendiary publications;" a piano-forte sent from Boston to
Virginia, was returned because the purchaser found an old copy of the
"Emancipator" in the case which contained it. Public meetings for the
promotion of American Slavery were held. There was one at Boston in
Faneui