ed by
the dead, heavy footsteps and the piteous cries of the chained gangs
that passed our door. The anguish of my boyish heart was intense; and I
was often consoled, when speaking to my mistress in the morning, to
hear her say that the custom was very wicked; that she hated to hear the
rattle of the chains, and the heart-rending cries. I was glad to find
one who sympathized with me in my horror.

Fellow citizens, this murderous traffic is to-day in active operation
in this boasted republic. In the solitude of my spirit, I see clouds of
dust raised on the highways of the south; I see the bleeding footsteps;
I hear the doleful wail of fettered humanity, on the way to the slave
markets, where the victims are to be sold like horses, sheep, and
swine, knocked off to the highest bidder. There I see the tenderest ties
ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, caprice, and rapacity of the
buyers and sellers of men. My soul sickens at the sight.

_Is this the land your fathers loved?
The freedom which they toiled to win?
Is this the earth whereon they moved?
Are these the graves they slumber in?_

But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things
remains to be presented. By an act of the American congress, not yet
two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible
and revolting form. By that act, Mason and Dixon's line has been
obliterated; New York has become as Virginia; and the power to hold,
hunt, and sell men, women, and children as slaves, remains no longer a
mere state institution, but is now an institution of the whole United
States. The power is coextensive with the star-spangled banner and
American christianity. Where these go, may also go the merciless
slave-hunter. Where these are, man is not sacred. He is a bird for the
sportsman's gun. By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees,
the liberty and person of every man are{357} put in peril. Your broad
republican domain is a hunting-ground for _men_. Not for thieves and
robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime.
Your law-makers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this
hellish sport. Your president, your secretary of state, your lords,
nobles, and ecclesiastics, enforce as a duty you owe to your free and
glorious country and to your God, that you do this accursed thing. Not
fewer than forty Americans have within the past two years be