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BONDAGE AND FREEDOM

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bidder. There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the Just,
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 co-extensive 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 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 been hunted down, and without a moment's
warning, hurried away in chains, and consigned to slavery and excruciating
torture. Some of these have had wives and children dependent on them for
bread; but of this no account was made. The right of the hunter to his prey,
stands superior to the right of marriage, and to all rights in this republic, the
rights of God included! For black men there are neither law, justice, humanity, nor religion. The fugitive slave law makes MERCY TO THEM A
CRIME; and bribes the judge who tries them. An American judge GETS
TEN DOLLARS FOR EVERY VICTIM HE CONSIGNS to slavery, and five, when
he fails to do so. The oath of and two villains is sufficient, under this hell-black enactment, to send the most pious and exemplary black man into
the remorseless jaws of slavery! His own testimony is nothing. He can
bring no witnesses for himself. The minister of American justice is bound
by the law to hear but one side; and that side is the side of the oppressor. Let