The Liberator Files

January 25, 1839

A long accounting “To the People of Massachusetts”, from Cushing, telling of the gag-order regarding the anti-slavery petitions in Congress, dated Dec 22,1838, from Washington.

June 30, 1848

Under Refuge of Oppression, reports a bill reported by Mr. Butler, in the Senate, from the Judiciary Committee.  (The bill is clearly a pre-cursor to portions of the 1850 Compromise .) The editor comments: “.. see how audacious in spirit and how impervious in demand the Slave Power has grown”.

January 12, 1849

Under the Refuge of Oppression column is an account from the Richmond Enquirer telling of recent proceedings in the Virginia Legislature, warning that passage of the Wilmot Proviso would threaten “disunion and civil war”.    “….there are certain laws, to which, if they should be enacted by Congress, the South, under no circumstances, ought permanently to submit.  We enumerate them as follows: 1. A law in any manner interfering with the institution of slavery in the States.  2. A law prohibiting the slave-trade between the States.  3. A law abolishing slavery or the slave-trade in the District of Columbia.  4. A law prohibiting slavery in the territories.”

April 6, 1849

An item from the Harrisburg Keystone, conveys a view of legislation and legislators.  It asks farmers, mechanics, laboring men to review the huge volume of acts passed at each session  “almost wholly made up of acts of incorporation, or supplementary thereto, and special and local acts, most of which ought never to have been passed. Yet every man in the community is taxed to keep up the legislative machinery between three and four months of every year……We may talk of parties, and of principles of government, as much as we please, but unless they are made productive of some good to the people, they are of no practical utility.”

January  18, 1850

Notice of Mr. Mason’s bill, providing ‘for the more effective execution of the third clause of the second section of the fourth article of the Constitution of the United States,’ is as follows:  (then follows the content of the bill), then this:  “Mr. Mason has given notice that he intends to prosecute the consideration of this bill, and has desired the Judiciary Committee to report it back as soon as convenient, for the action of the Senate. It is a deliberate movement to arrest the proceedings of the fugitive slave conspiracies and underground railroads in the North, for running off, harboring and aiding in the escape of the slaves of the South from their masters. It is clearly a measure based upon the Constitution, and will test the good faith of the North to that instrument.”