their Conscience. You remember how the tyrannical king clutched at the
People's purse and their person too, and smote at all freedom of
speech, while the purchased Judges were always ready, the tools of
Despotism. But you know what it all came to--Justice could not enter
upon the law through the doors of Westminster Hall; so she tried it at
Naseby and Worcester and with her "Invincible Ironsides" took
possession by means of pike and gun. Charles I. laid his guilty head
on the block; James II. only escaped the same fate by timely flight.
If Courts will not decree Justice, then Civil War will, for it must be
done, and a battle becomes a "Crowning Mercy."

Gentlemen, I have shown you what the Slave Power of America aims
at,--a Despotism which is worse for this age than the Stuarts' tyranny
for that time. You see its successive steps of encroachment. Behold
what it has done within ten years. It has made Slavery perpetual in
Florida; has annexed Texas, a Slave State as big as the kingdom of
France; has fought the Mexican War, with Northern money, and spread
bondage over Utah, New Mexico, and California; it has given Texas ten
millions of Northern dollars to help Slavery withal; it has passed the
fugitive slave bill and kidnapped men in the West, in the Middle
States, and even in our own New England; it has given ten millions of
dollars for a little strip of worthless land, the Mesilla valley,
whereon to make a Slave Railroad and carry bondage from the Atlantic
to the Pacific; it has repealed the Prohibition of Slavery, and spread
the mildew of the South all over Kansas and Nebraska. Ask your
capitalists, who have bought Missouri lands and railroads, how their
stock looks just now; not only your Liberty but even their Money is in
peril. You know the boast of Mr. Toombs. Gentlemen, you know what the
United States Courts have done--with poisoned weapons they have struck
deadly blows at Freedom. You know Sharkey and Grier and Kane. You
recollect the conduct of Kidnappers' Courts at Milwaukie, Sandusky,
Cincinnati, Philadelphia--in the Hall of Independence. But why need I
wander so far? Alas! you know too well what has been done in Boston,
our own Boston, the grave of Puritan piety. You remember the Union
Meeting, Ellen Craft, Sims, chains around the Court House, the Judges
crawling under, soldiers in the street, drunk, smiting at the
citizens; you do not forget Anthony Burns, the Marshal's guard, the
loaded cannon in place of Ju