he State,
are kindly restored to their former condition. In Maryland a free
negro who marries a white woman, thereby acquires all the privileges
of a slave--and generally, throughout the slave region, including
the District of Columbia, every negro not known to be free, is
mercifully considered as a slave, and if his master cannot be
ascertained, he is thrown into a dungeon, and there kept, till by a
public sale a master can be provided for him. But often the law
grants to colored men, _known to be free_, all the advantages of
slavery. Thus, in Georgia, every _free_ colored man coming into the
State, and unable to pay a fine of one hundred dollars, becomes a
slave for life; in Florida, insolvent debtors, if _black_, are SOLD
for the benefit of their creditors; and in the District of Columbia
a free colored man, thrown into jail on suspicion of being a slave
and proving his freedom, is required by law to be sold as a slave,
if too poor to pay his jail fees. Let it not be supposed that these
laws are all obsolete and inoperative. They catch many a northern
negro, who, in pursuit of his own business, or on being decoyed
by others ventures to enter the slave region; and who, of course,
helps to augment the wealth of our southern brethren. On the 6th
of March, 1839, a report by a Committee was made to the House of
Representatives of the Massachusetts Legislature, in which are given
the _names_ of seventeen free colored men who had been enslaved at
the south. It also states an instance in which twenty-five colored
citizens, belonging to Massachusetts, were confined at one time in a
southern jail, and another instance in which 75 free colored persons
from different free States were confined, all preparatory to their
sale as slaves according to law.

The facts disclosed in this report induced the Massachusetts
Legislature to pass a resolution protesting against the kidnapping
laws of the slave States, "as invading the sacred rights of citizens
of this commonwealth, as contrary to the Constitution of the United
States, and in utter derogation of that great principle of the
common law which presumes every person to be innocent until proved
to be guilty;" and ordered the protest to be forwarded to the
Governors of the several States.

But it is not at the south alone that freemen may be converted into
slaves "according to law." The Act of Congress respecting the
recovery of fugitive slaves, affords most extraordinary facilities