Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 2

[35] conscientious and striking reluctance of slaveholders to trespass on the rights of others, that this loose law, this wide-open gate for avarice and perjury, shall never be abused! And, further still, we are told not to be anxious about the checks and safeguards of jury trial; since, when such unfortunates reach Charleston or New Orleans,--and, by the way, what bond is taken that they ever shall, and not be carried to Cuba or Brazil first?--they, the mistakenly kidnapped citizens of the Commonwealth, shall have all the blessed privileges of a jury trial that the slaves of that paradise enjoy! We ask bread,--a freeman's jury trial (a matter of right, not of favor), by his peers in the neighborhood, with a witness-box open to all men, white or black, and the burden of proof on the claimant to show his title. Our statesmen (!) offer us a stone,--the slave's jury trial (not a matter of right, but granted when he finds some one willing to run the risk of paying single, perhaps double, costs, and in some States, only if the Court pleases, even then), subject to lashes if the suit be held groundless, the jury-box filled probably with slave-holders, a witness-box closed against all men of his own race, and the burden of proof on him to show that the claimant does not own him according to Southern law! Verily, gentlemen, our unprofessional eyes can see, or think they see, a difference worth “discussing” !

Mr. Clay says, in his letter to the Philadelphia Union Meeting, that the question now is, “Whether this agitation against slavery shall put down the Union, or the Union be preserved, and that agitation be put down. There is no other alternative.” What does he mean by “agitation” ? He means meetings like this, of men and women gathered together to do honor to an honest man, to encourage each other in resisting infamous and cruel