ake good
descriptions and send to me, and I'll find masters for 'em."

That is the way men are carried _back_ to slavery.

But in view of all the facts, I say that, if ever again a man is seized
near me, and is about to be carried southward as a slave before any
legal investigation has been had, I shall hold it to be my duty, as I
held it that day, to secure for him, if possible, a legal inquiry into
the character of the claim by which he is held. And I go farther; I say
that if it is adjudged illegal to procure even such an investigation,
then we are thrown back upon those last defenses of our rights which
cannot be taken from us, and which God gave us that we need not be
slaves. I ask your Honor, while I say this, to place yourself in my
situation, and you will say with me that, if your brother, if your
friend, if your wife, if your child, had been seized by men who claimed
them as fugitives, and the law of the land forbade you to ask any
investigation, and precluded the possibility of any legal protection or
redress--then you will say with me that you would not only demand the
protection of the law, but you would call in your neighbors and your
friends, and would ask them to say with you, that, these, your friends,
_could not_ be taken into slavery.

And now, I thank you for this leniency, this indulgence, in giving a man
unjustly condemned, by a tribunal before which he is declared to have no
rights, the privilege of speaking in his own behalf. I know that it will
do nothing toward mitigating your sentence, but it is a privilege to be
allowed to speak, and I thank you for it. I shall submit to the penalty,
be it what it may. But I stand up here to say that if for doing what I
did on that day at Wellington, I am to go to jail for six months, and
pay a fine of a thousand dollars, according to the Fugitive Slave Law,
and if such is the protection the laws of this country afford me, I must
take upon myself the responsibility of self-protection; when I come to
be claimed by some perjured wretch as his slave, I shall never be taken
into slavery. And in that trying hour, I would have others do to me, as
I would call upon my friends to help me; as I would call upon you, your
Honor, to help me, as I would call upon you (to the District Attorney)
to help me, and upon you (to Judge Bliss), and you (his counsel) _so
help me God_! I stand here to say that I will do all I can for any man
thus seized and held, though the inevita