those provisions of law were odious and wicked and wrong which
provided for punishing men for aiding the slave to escape, therefore
they must be wicked and wrong now when they are employed for the
punishing a man who undertakes to put a person into slavery. Sir, that
does not follow at all. A law may be iniquitous and unjust and wrong
which undertakes to punish another for doing an innocent act, which
would be righteous and just and proper to punish a man for doing a
wicked act. We have upon our statute-books a law punishing a man who
commits murder, because the commission of murder is a high crime, and
the party who does it forfeits his right to live; but would it be just
to apply the law which punishes a person for committing murder to an
innocent person who had killed another accidentally, without malice?
That is the difference. It is the difference between right and wrong,
between good and evil. True, the features of the Fugitive Slave Law
were abominable when they were used for the purpose of punishing, not
negroes, as the Senator from Indiana says, but white men. The Fugitive
Slave Law was enacted for the purpose of punishing white men who aided
to give the natural gift of liberty to those who were enslaved. Now,
sir, we propose to use the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law for
the purpose of punishing those who deny freedom, not those who seek to
aid persons to escape to freedom. The difference was too clearly
pointed out by the colleague of the Senator [Mr. Lane] to justify me
in taking further time in alluding to it.

"But the Senator objects to this bill because it authorizes the
calling in of the military; and he asserts that it is the only law in
which the military is brought in to enforce it. The Senator from
Pennsylvania [Mr. Cowan] follows this up with a half hour's speech,
denouncing this law as obnoxious to the objection that it is a
military law, that it is taking the trial of persons for offenses out
of the hands of the courts and placing them under the military--a
monstrous proposition, he says. Is that so? What is the law?

"It is a court bill; it is to be executed through the courts, and in
no other way. But does the Senator mean to say it is a military bill
because the military may be called in, in aid of the execution of the
law through the courts? Does the Senator from Pennsylvania--I should
like his attention, and that of the Senator from Indiana, too--deny
the authority to call in the milit