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when, before the expiration of the first year, the Legislature of Georgia, by solemn act, a copy of which I have now before me, “approved" by Wilson Lumpkin, Governor, appropriated $5000 “to be paid to any person who shall arrest, bring to trial, and prosecute to conviction under the laws of this State, the editor or publisher of a certain paper called the Liberator, published at the town of Boston and State of Massachusetts." This infamous legislative act touching a person absolutely beyond the jurisdiction of Georgia, and in no way amenable to its laws, constituted a plain bribe to the gangs of kidnappers engendered by Slavery. With this barefaced defiance of justice and decency Slave-masters inaugurated the system of violence by which they have sought to crush every voice that has been raised against Slavery.
2. Here is another illustration of a different character. Free persons of color, citizens of Massachusetts, and, according to the institutions of this Commonwealth, entitled to equal privileges with other citizens, being in service as mariners, and touching at the port of Charleston, in South-Carolina, have been seized, and with no allegation against them, except of entering this port in the discharge of their rightful business, have been cast into prison, and there detained during the delay of the vessel. This is by virtue of a statute of South-Carolina, passed in 1828, which further declares, that in the failure of the captain to pay the expenses, these freemen “shall be seized and taken as absolute slaves," one moiety of the proceeds of their sale to belong to the Sheriff. Against all remonstrance — against the official opinion of Mr. Wirt, as Attorney-General of the United States, declaring it unconstitutional — against the solemn judgment of Mr. Justice Johnson, of the Supreme Court of the United States, himself a Slave-master and citizen of South-Carolina, also pronouncing it unconstitutional — this statute, which is an obvious injury to Northern ship-owners, as it is an outrage to the mariners whom it seizes, has been upheld to this day by South-Carolina.
But this is not all. Massachusetts, in order to obtain for her citizens that protection which was denied, and especially to save them from the dread penalty of being sold into Slavery, appointed a citizen of South-Carolina to act as her agent for this purpose, and to bring suits in the Circuit Court of the United States in order to try the constitutionality of this pretension.
