will be liable to be sold into slavery, the crime of freedom
being unpardonable. The Missouri Senate has before it a bill providing
that all free negroes above the age of eighteen years who shall be
found in the State after September, 1860, shall be sold into slavery;
and that all such negroes as shall enter the State after September,
1861, and remain there twenty-four hours, shall also be sold into
slavery for ever. Mississippi, Kentucky, and Georgia, and in fact, I
believe, all the slave States, are legislating in the same manner.
Thus the slaveholders make it almost impossible for free persons of
colour to get out of the slave States, in order that they may sell them
into slavery if they don't go. If no white persons travelled upon
railroads except those who could get some one to vouch for their
character in a penal bond of one thousand dollars, the railroad
companies would soon go to the "wall." Such mean legislation is too
low for comment; therefore I leave the villainous acts to speak for
themselves.

But the Dred Scott decision is the crowning act of infamous Yankee
legislation. The Supreme Court, the highest tribunal of the Republic,
composed of nine Judge Jeffries's, chosen both from the free and slave
States, has decided that no coloured person, or persons of African
extraction, can ever become a citizen of the United States, or have any
rights which white men are bound to respect. That is to say, in the
opinion of this Court, robbery, rape, and murder are not crimes when
committed by a white upon a coloured person.

Judges who will sneak from their high and honourable position down into
the lowest depths of human depravity, and scrape up a decision like
this, are wholly unworthy the confidence of any people. I believe such
men would, if they had the power, and were it to their temporal
interest, sell their country's independence, and barter away every
man's birthright for a mess of pottage. Well may Thomas Campbell say--

United States, your banner wears,
Two emblems,--one of fame,
Alas, the other that it bears
Reminds us of your shame!
The white man's liberty in types
Stands blazoned by your stars;
But what's the meaning of your stripes?
They mean your Negro-scars.

When the time had arrived for us to start, we blew out the lights,
knelt down, and prayed to our Heavenly Father mercifully to assist us,
as he did his people of old, to escape from cruel bondage; and we