the authority
of our laws, transports them into its own jurisdiction, casts them
into prison, confines them in fetters, and loads them with chains, for
pretended offences against their own laws, found by willing grand
juries upon the oath (to use the language of the late Governor of
Ohio) of a perjured villain. Is this fancy, or is it fact, sober
reality, solemn fact? Need I say all this, and much more, as now
matter of history in the case of the Rev. John B. Mahan, of Brown
county, Ohio? Yes, it is so; but this is but the beginning--a case of
equal outrage has lately occurred, if newspapers are to be relied on,
in the seizure of a citizen of Ohio, without even the forms of law,
and who was carried into Virginia and shamefully punished by tar and
feathers, and other disgraceful means, and rode upon a rail, according
to the order of Judge Lynch, and this, only because in Ohio he was an
abolitionist. Would I could stop here--but I cannot. This slave
interest or power seizes upon persons of color in our States, carries
them into States where men are property, and makes merchandize of
them, sometimes under sanction of law, but more properly by its abuse,
and sometimes by mere personal force, thus disturbing our quiet and
harassing our citizens. A case of this kind has lately occurred, where
a colored boy was seduced from Ohio into Indiana, taken from thence
into Alabama and sold as a slave; and to the honor of the slave
States, and gentlemen who administer the laws there, be it said, that
many who have thus been taken and sold by the connivance, if not
downright corruption, of citizens in the free States, have been
liberated and adjudged free in the States where they have been sold,
as was the case of the boy mentioned, who was sold in Alabama.

Slave power is seeking to establish itself in every State, in defiance
of the constitution and laws of the States within which it is
prohibited. In order to secure its power beyond the reach of the
States, it claims its parentage from the Constitution of the United
States. It demands of us total silence as to its proceedings, denies
to our citizens the liberty of speech and the press, and punishes them
by mobs and violence for the exercise of these rights. It has sent its
agents into the free States for the purpose of influencing their
Legislatures to pass laws for the security of its power within such
State, and for the enacting new offences and new punishments for their
own citiz