THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL — ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE OF MASSACHUSETTS, BY THE BOARD OF MANAGERS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY
Massachusetts Freemen and Women! Politicians and wordly men are just congratulating themselves that the much vexed question of slavery is at rest, and that a compromise which is satisfactory to the moderate men of both sections of the country has been effected. They do not know, or have forgotten, that the law of the eternal God is right and truth. They do not know, or have forgotten, that any question, in order to be really settled, must be settled right. No abiding compromise can possibly be made between right and wrong — between truth and falsehood — between slavery and freedom. Right and Truth and Freedom must prevail, as surely as God’s law is right and true.
—then the article quotes reference to relevant parts of the Constitution, …..
But the Fugitive Slave Bill has become a law. Do you fully realize how entirely these fundamental safeguards of liberty, which the Constitution thus points out, are disregarded in its enactment? Are you fully aware how completely the rights and liberties of our own free citizens are placed at the mercy of the slaveholders? ……
Freemen of Massachusetts! Followers of Christ the Redeemer! Believers in a higher law than that of man, even the unchangeable law of God! The hour has come to prove your unfaltering attachment to liberty — the sincerity of your religious profession — that you are not aetheistical in heart! ………
This law is to be denounced, resisted, disobeyed, at all hazards. Its enforcement in Massachusetts must be rendered impossible. ………………..
SIGNED, Francis Jackson, President, Edmumd Quincy. Secretary (Liberator, September 27, 1850. pages 2 & 3)
