itutions of the South, and
to object to them not because the acts themselves had done them any
hurt, but because they were really a stamp of degradation upon Southern
men, or something like that--I do not quote his words. The other
Senators that referred to it probably intended to be understood in the
same way; but they did acquit these laws of having done them injury to
their knowledge or belief.

I do not believe that these laws were, as the Senator supposed, enacted
with a view to exasperate the South, or to put them in a position of
degradation. Why, sir, these laws against kidnapping are as old as the
common law itself, as that Senator well knows. To take a freeman and
forcibly carry him out of the jurisdiction of the State, has ever been,
by all civilized countries, adjudged to be a great crime; and in most of
them, wherever I have understood anything about it, they have penal
laws to punish such an offence. I believe the State of Virginia has one
to-day as stringent in all its provisions as almost any other of which
you complain. I have not looked over the statute-books of the South; but
I do not doubt that there will be found this species of legislation upon
all your statute-books.

Here let me say, because the subject occurs to me right here, the
Senator from Virginia seemed not so much to point out any specific acts
that Northern people had done injurious to your property as, what he
took to be a dishonor and a degradation. I think I feel as sensitive
upon that subject as any other man. If I know myself, I am the last man
that would be the advocate of any law or any act that would humiliate or
dishonor any section of this country, or any individual in it; and, on
the other hand, let me tell these gentlemen I am exceedingly sensitive
upon that same point, whatever they may think about it. I would
rather sustain an injury than an insult or dishonor; and I would be
as unwilling to inflict it upon others as I would be to submit to it
myself. I never will do either the one or the other if I know it.

* * * * *

I know that charges have been made and rung in our ears, and reiterated
over and over again, that we have been unfaithful in the execution of
your fugitive bill. Sir, that law is exceedingly odious to any free
people. It deprives us of all the old guarantees of liberty that the
Anglo-Saxon race everywhere have considered sacred--more sacred than
anything else.

* * *