against the encroachments of slavery, or to
pray that she would let her poor victims go.

I renounce my allegiance to a Constitution that enthrones such a
power, wielded for the purpose of depriving me of my rights, of
robbing my countrymen of their liberties, and of securing its own
protection, support and perpetuation.

Passing by that clause of the Constitution, which restricted Congress
for twenty years, from passing any law against the African slave
trade, and which gave authority to raise a revenue on the stolen sons
of Africa, I come to that part of the fourth article, which guarantees
protection against "_domestic violence_," which pledges to the South
the military force of the country, to protect the masters against
their insurgent slaves, and binds us, and our children, to shoot down
our fellow-countrymen, who may rise, in emulation of our revolutionary
fathers, to vindicate their inalienable "right to life, _liberty_, and
the pursuit of happiness,"--this clause of the Constitution, I say
distinctly, I never will support.

That part of the Constitution which provides for the surrender of
fugitive slaves, I never have supported and never will. I will join in
no slave-hunt. My door shall stand open, as it has long stood, for the
panting and trembling victim of the slave-hunter. When I shut it
against him, may God shut the door of his mercy against me! Under this
clause of the Constitution, and designed to carry it into effect,
slavery has demanded that laws should be passed, and of such a
character, as have left the free citizen of the North without
protection for his own liberty. The question, whether a man seized in
a free State as a slave, _is_ a slave or not, the law of Congress does
not allow a jury to determine: but refers it to the decision of a
Judge of a United States' Court, or even of the humblest State
magistrate, it may be, upon the testimony or affidavit of the party
most deeply interested to support the claim. By virtue of this law,
freemen have been seized and dragged into perpetual slavery--and
should I be seized by a slave-hunter in any part of the country where
I am not personally known, neither the Constitution nor laws of the
United States would shield me from the same destiny.

These, sir, are the specific parts of the Constitution of the United
States, which in my opinion are essentially vicious, hostile at once
to the liberty and to the morals of the nation. And these are the
princip