Is there a man in Massachusetts with a spirit so low, so
debased, so corrupted by his fears, or his fortune, that he is
prepared to say this is a condition of things to be endured in
perpetuity by us? and that this is an inheritance to be transmitted
by us to our children, for all generations? For so long as the
fugitive-slave clause remains in the Constitution, unobliterated, it
is an obligation perpetual upon them, as well as upon us.
"The obligation incumbent upon the Free States _must be obliterated
from the Constitution, at every hazard_. I believe that, in the
nature of things, by the law of God, and the laws of man, _that
clause is at this moment abrogated, so far as respects common
obligation_. In 1789, the Free States agreed to be field-drivers and
pound-keepers for the Slaveholding States, within the limits, and
according to the fences, of the old United States. But between that
year and this A.D. 1854, the slaveholders have broken down the old
boundaries, and opened new fields, of an unknown and indefinite
extent.
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