us heritages that our sires and grandsires kept stations on that
same road, and many an escaped bondsman looking back from his safe
asylum in Canada called them "blessed." Eighteen Hundred and
Fifty-nine was in the halcyon days of "Fugitive Slave Law" lovers. If
John Wesley considered Slavery the "sum of all villainies," I wonder
what terse definition he would have given to this the vilest enactment
that ever rested on our Statute Book. Not satisfied with whipping,
shooting, hanging, destroying in a thousand ways these unhappy slaves,
the aggressive South forced upon a passive North a law whose enormity
passes description. Every man at the beck of the Southern kidnapper,
by its provisions was obliged to play the part of a Negro catcher. So
great was the passiveness of the North that her most eminent orator,
instead of decrying the proposition as unworthy of humanity, even
lifted up his voice in its defense. Virgil inveighed against the
accursed thirst for gold--_auri sacra fames_; but it was not this
thirst that made him, ofttimes called the "Godlike," turn against all
the traditions of his birth and associations, and speak words which
closed to him Faneuil Hall, the Cradle of Liberty, and drew from
Whittier the scathing lines of

"Ichabod!"

But his thirst was not appeased, and the South before which he had
prostrated himself, turned away from him, spurning his bribe, and made
a nomination which terribly disappointed Webster, and on account of
which he went down to his grave broken hearted. Imagine if you can the
astonishment of the student a hundred years hence, when he reads that
the highest judicial tribunal in the land, voiced through its aged
though not venerable chief, said in the year of our lord, 1857, and in
the year of American Independence the eighty-first, that three
millions of people, at that time represented in Congress through an
infamous scheme of apportionment, had no rights that a white man was
bound to respect. Two judges of that court, and be it ever remembered
to their credit, dissented. Through the worse than Cimmerian darkness
that overspread the Supreme Bench of those days, the names of McLean
and Curtis shine forth, the only rays of light; and I may say with the
exception of that of Taney, remembered through his unique position,
the only names recalled to-day. I doubt whether any present can name
three out of the six judges who concurred with their Superior in his
opinion. It was the age