FootNote
The new kid on the block, FootNote is known for digitizing historical
documents... many of which are genealogical gems. With naturalizations,
city directories, war records, newspapers, town records, etc... this new
kid is quickly being recognized as an alternative to Ancestry.
While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
The name of the Northern men
who voted for this cruel kidnapping law
should not be forgotten. Until they repent,
and do works meet for repentance, let their
names stand high and conspicuous on the roll
of infamy. Let the "slow-moving finger of
scorn" point them out, when they walk among
men, and the stings of shame,
disappointment, and remorse continually
visit them in secret, till they are forced
to cry, "my punishment is greater than I can
bear." As to the Southern men who voted for
the law, they only appeared in their
legitimate character of oppressors of the
poor—whom God will repay, in his own time.
The thousand-tongued voices of their
brother's blood cry against them from the
ground.
The following is the vote, in the Senate, on
the engrossment of the bill:
Yeas,—Atchison, Badger, Barnwell,
Bell, Berrien, Butler, Davis, of
Mississippi, Dawson, A.C. Dodge, of Iowa,
Downs, Foote, Houston, Hunter, Jones, of
Iowa, King, Mangum, Mason, Pearce, Rusk,
Sebastian, Soulé, Spruance, Sturgeon, of
Pennsylvania, Turney, Underwood, Wales,
Yulee.—27.
Nays.—Baldwin, Bradbury, Chase,
Cooper, Davis, of Massachusetts, Dayton,
Henry Dodge, of Wisconsin, Greene, Smith,
Upham, Walker, Winthrop.—12.
Absent, or not Voting.—Benton,
Borland, Bright of Indiana, Clarke of Rhode
Island, Clay, Cass of Michigan, Clemens,
Dickinson of New York, Douglas of Illinois,
Ewing of Ohio, Felch of Michigan, Hale of
New Hampshire, Hamlin of Maine, Miller of
New Jersey, Morton, Norris of New Hampshire,
Phelps of Vermont, Pratt, Seward of New
York, Shields of Illinois, Whitcomb of
Indiana. [Fifteen Northern Senators
absent from the vote.]
On the final passage of the Bill in the
Senate, the yeas and nays were not taken.
D.S. Dickinson of New York, who had been
absent when the vote was taken on the
engrossment, spoke in favor of the bill. Mr.
Seward was said to be absent from the city,
detained by ill health.
When the Bill came up in the House Of
Representatives, (September 12th,) James
Thompson of Pennsylvania, got the floor,
doubtless by a previous understanding with
the Speaker, and addressed the House in
support of the Bill. He closed his remarks
by moving the previous question! It was
ordered, and thus all opportunity for reply,
and for discussion of the Bill was cut off.
The Bill was then passed to its third
reading—equivalent to enactment—by a vote of
109 Yeas, to 75 Nays; as follows:
Yeas.
Maine.—Thomas J.D. Fuller, of Calais;
Elbridge Gerry, of Waterford; Nathaniel S.
Littlefield, of Bridgton. New Hampshire. Harry Hibbard, of
Bath; Charles H. Peaslee, of Concord.
Massachusetts.—Samuel A. Eliot, of Boston. New York.—Hiram Walden, of
Waldensville. New Jersey.—Isaac Wildrick, of
Blairstown. Pennsylvania.—Milo M. Dimmick, of
Stroudsburg; Job Mann, of Bedford; J.X.
McLanahan, of Chambersburg; John Robbins,
Jr., of Philadelphia; Thomas Ross, of
Doylestown; James Thompson, of Erie. Ohio.—Moses Hoagland, of Millersburg;
John K. Miller, of Mount Vernon; John L.
Taylor, of Chillicothe. Michigan.—Alexander W. Buell, of
Detroit. Indiana.—Nathaniel Albertson, of
Greenville; William J. Brown, of Amity;
Cyrus L. Dunham, of Salem; Willis A. Gorman,
of Bloomington; Joseph E. McDonald, of
Crawfordsville; Edward W. Mcgaughey, of
Rockville. Illinois.—William H. Bissell, of
Belleville; Thomas L. Harris, of Petersburg;
John A. MccLernand; William A. Richardson,
of Quincy; Timothy R. Young, of Marshall. Iowa.—Shepherd Leffler, of
Burlington. California.—Edward Gilbert.
[All these Northern Traitors called
themselves Democrats! save three—Eliot of
Massachusetts, Taylor of Ohio, and McGaughey
of Indiana, who were Whigs.]
Every Representative of a Slaveholding
State, who voted at all, voted YEA.
Their names are needless, and are omitted.
Daniel Webster was not a
member of the Senate when the vote on the
Fugitive Slave Bill was taken. He had been
made Secretary of State, a short time
previous. All, however, will remember the
powerful aid which he gave to the new
compromise measures, and among them to the
Fugitive Slave Bill, in his notorious
Seventh of March Speech, [1850.] A few
extracts from that Speech will show how
heavily the responsibility of the existence
of this law rests upon Daniel Webster:
"I suppose there is to be found no
injunction against that relation [Slavery]
between man and man, in the teachings of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ, or of any of his
Apostles." Webster's 7th March Speech,
(Authorized Edition,) p. 9.
"One complaint of the South has, in my
opinion, just foundation; and that is, that
there has been found at the North, among
individuals and among legislators, a
disinclination to perform, fully, their
Constitutional duties in regard to the
return of persons bound to service, who have
escaped into the free States. In that
respect, it is my judgment that the South is
right, and the North is wrong." * * * * "My
friend at the head of the Judiciary
Committee [Mr. Mason of Virginia] has a bill
on the subject now before the Senate, with
some amendments to it, Which I Propose to
Support, with all its Provisions, to the
fullest extent."—Idem. p. 29.
He proceeded to assure the Senate that the
North would, on due consideration, fulfill
"their constitutional obligations" "with
alacrity." "Therefore, I repeat, sir, that
here is a ground of complaint against the
North well founded, which ought to be
removed, which it is now in the power of the
different departments of this Government to
remove; which calls for the enactment of
proper laws authorizing the judicature of
this Government, in the several States, to
do all that is necessary for the recapture
of fugitive slaves, and for the restoration
of them to those who claim them Wherever I
go, and whenever I speak on the subject, and
when I speak here, I desire to speak to the
whole North, I say that the South has been
injured in this respect, and has a right to
complain; and the North has been too
careless of what, I think, the Constitution
peremptorily and emphatically enjoins upon
her as a duty."—Idem. p. 30.
In a speech in the United States Senate,
July 17, 1850, made with an evident view to
calm that Northern feeling which had been
aroused and excited by his 7th of March
speech, beyond the power of priest or
politician wholly to subdue, Mr. Webster
said there were various misapprehensions
respecting the working of the proposed
Fugitive Slave Bill:
"The first of these misapprehensions," he
said, "is an exaggerated sense of the actual
evil of the reclamation of fugitive slaves,
felt by Massachusetts and the other New
England States. What produced that? The
cases do not exist. There has not been a
case within the knowledge of this
generation, in which a man has been taken
back from Massachusetts into slavery by
process of law, not one." * * * * "Not only
has there been no case, so far as I can
learn, of the reclamation of a slave by his
master, which ended in taking him back to
slavery, in this generation, but I will add,
that, as far as I have been able to go back
in my researches, as far as I have been able
to hear and learn, in all that region there
has been no one case of false claim. * * *
There is no danger of any such violation
being perpetrated."A—Webster's
Speech on the Compromise Bill, in the United
States Senate, 17th of July, 1850, edition
of Gideon & Co., Washington, pp. 23-25.
[A]
See also Mr. Webster's letter to the
Citizens of Newburyport, dated May 15th,
1850, wherein he urges the same point, with
great pains of argument.
With such words did Mr. Webster endeavor to
allay Northern alarm, and to create the
impression (which was created and which
prevailed extensively with his friends) that
the Fugitive Law was only a concession to
Southern feeling, and that few or no
attempts to enforce it were likely to be
made.
But when a few months had proved him a false
prophet, and the Southern chase after
fugitive men, women, and children had become
hot and fierce, and in one or two instances
the hunter had been foiled in his attempts
and had lost his prey, Mr. Webster changed
his tone, as follows:
In May, 1851, at Syracuse, N.Y., he said:
"Depend upon it, the Law [the Fugitive Slave
Law] will be executed in its spirit and to
its letter. It will be executed in all the
great cities—here in Syracuse, in the midst
of the next Anti-Slavery Convention, if the
occasion shall arise."
Certainly, so far as in Mr. Webster lay, so
far as was in the power of Mr. Fillmore, and
the officers of the United States Government
generally, and of the still larger crowd of
expectants of office, nothing was left
undone to introduce the tactics, discipline,
and customs of the Southern plantation into
our Northern cities and towns, in order to
enforce the Fugitive Law.
