60
master, Mr. Marshall of Kentucky, insisted that he should be “silenced." Ominous word! full of suggestion to the bludgeonbearers of Slavery. But the great representative of Freedom stood firm. Meanwhile Slavery assumed more and more the port of the giant Maul in the Pilgrim's Progress, who continued with his club breaking the skulls of pilgrims, until he was slain by Mr. Great Heart, making way for the other Pilgrims, Mr. Valiant for Truth, Mr. Standfast, and Mr. Honest.
Next to John Quincy Adams, no person in Congress has been more conspicuous for long-continued and patriotic services against Slavery, than Joshua R. Giddings, of Ohio; nor have any such services received in higher degree that homage which is found in the personal and most vindictive assaults of Slavemasters. Jor nearly twenty years he sat in the House of Representatives, bearing his testimony always loftily, and never shrinking, though exposed to the grossest brutality. In a recent public address at New-York, he has himself recounted some of these instances.
On the presentation by him cf resolutions affirming that Slavery was a local institution, and could not exist outside of the Slave States, and applying this principle to the case of the Creole, the House “caught" the South-Carolina fever. A proposition censuring him was introduced by Slave-masters and pressed to a vote, under the operation of the previous question, without giving him a moment for explanation or reply. This glaring outrage upon freedom of debate was redressed at once by the constituency of Mr. Giddings, who returned him again to his seat. From that time the rage of the Slave-masters against him was constant. Here is his own brief account:
Listening to these horrors, ancient stories of Barbarism seem all outdone; and the “viper broth," which was a favorite decoction in a barbarous age, seems to have become the daily