John W. Menard to Frederick Douglass, September 15, 1859

'GIVE ME LIBERTY, OR GIVE ME DEATH!'

FRIEND DOUGLASS:—The heroic sentiments of Patrick Henry were, two or three weeks ago, nobly adopted by a colored man named Ellis who being supposed to be a fugitive from Missouri escaped a year or two ago and took refuge under the [disguising?] wings of Illinois, (where the friends and bloodhounds of the infamous Fugitive Slave Law are as thick as fogs after a summer's shower,) in the county of St. Clair, about twenty miles from St. Louis. The man (Ellis) having resided on a farm owned by a colored man for several months, and feeling himself as safe as S. A. Douglass did on the Nebraska Bill, was seized by a set of hounds who attempted to handcuff him as they would a robber! But the manliness of the colored man whipped them all. They saw that there was no blood of submission that ran in his veins; they shot him three or four times and wounded him very bad; after which they handcuffed him, and was on their way to his supposed original house; but seeing that he was too weak to travel, and almost lifeless, they at once let him go, and then made their escape. So he (Ellis) made out to get at some neighboring house and applied for relief, and they took him to the 'Poor House,' where he soon after died.

Oh! what a crying shame is this spectacle! What a high-handed crime upon humanity! Such a sight is enough to pull down the angry frowns of high Heaven. How long shall inhumanity exist? Shall the imperishable streams of freedom prevail, which flows from the blood that was shed in the struggle for Independence? The history of American Slavery is a history of repeated injury and usurpation, and a standing monument that shall ever stare the posterity of the fathers of '76 in the face with threatening vengeance!

Yours for Universal Freedom,

JOHN W. MENARD.

ALTON, Illinois, Sept. 15th, 1859.