Virginian slave-bolder, and when the plea of humanity was contemptuously disregarded as irrelevant and impracticable.
In 1850, when the tide of opinion was already on the turn, the passing of the Fugitive Slave Law, which enabled the owners of escaped slaves to recover their living chattels from the free cities of the North, created intense indignation among the Massachusetts abolitionists,[1] and led to rioting at Boston on the occasion of the rendition of Simms in 1851 and Anthony Burns in 1854. Thoreau deals with this question in his essay on "Slavery in Massachusetts," which was read as a lecture at Framingham on July 4th, 1854, and afterwards printed in the Liberator, the organ of abolition, which had been established by William Lloyd Garrison at Boston in 1831. In burning words, which retain their freshness and significance long after the details they treat of are forgotten, he denounces the selfishness and folly of those citizens of Massachusetts who could celebrate the national Independence Day a week after the rendition of an innocent man to slavery. "Now-a-days," he says, "men wear a fool's cap, and call it a liberty cap. I do not know but there are some who, if they were tied to a whipping-post and could get but one hand free, would use it to ring the bells and fire the cannons to celebrate their liberty. So some of my townsmen took the liberty to ring and fire. That was the extent of their freedom; and when the sound of the bells died away, their liberty died away also; when the powder was all expended, their liberty
- ↑ This was the occasion of Daniel Webster's apostasy from the anti-slavery cause. It is noticeable that Thoreau regarded Webster as a mere opportunist at an early period. See p. 47.
