Legislators of Massachusetts! if you had been thus continually robbed of your rights by the hand of violence, what would you think of the compact between North and South to perpetuate your wrongs, and transmit them to your posterity?  Would you not regard it as a league between highwaymen, who had “no rights that you were bound to respect”?  I put the question plainly and directly to your consciences and your common sense, and they will not allow you to answer, No.  Are you, then, doing right to sustain the validity of a law for others, which you would vehemently reject for yourselves in the name of outraged justice and humanity?

The incidents I have supposed might happen to yourselves if you were slaves, are not an imaginary accumulation of horrors.  The things I have described are happening in this country every day.  I have talked with many “fugitives from injustice,” and I could not, within the limits of these pages, even hint at a tithe of the sufferings and wrongs they have described.  I have also talked with several slaveholders, who had emancipated themselves from the hateful system.  Being at a safe distance from lynching neighbors, they could venture to tell the truth; and their statements fully confirm all that I have heard from the lips of slaves.  If you read Southern Laws, you will need very small knowledge of human nature to be convinced that the practical results must inevitably be utter barbarism.  In view of those laws, I have always wondered how sensible people could be so slow in believing the actual state of things in slaveholding communities.

There are no incidents in history, or romance, more thrilling than the sufferings, perils, and hair-breadth escapes of American slaves.  No Puritan pilgrim, or hero of ’76, has manifested more courage and perseverance in the cause of freedom, than has been evinced, in thousands of instances, by this persecuted race.  In future ages, popular ballads will be sung to commemorate their heroic achievements, and children more enlightened than ours will marvel at the tyranny of their white ancestors.

All of you have doubtless read some accounts of what these unhappy men and women have dared and endured.  Did you never put yourselves in their stead, and imagine how you would feel, under similar circumstances?  Not long ago, a young man escaped from slavery by clinging night and day to the under part of a steamboat, drenched by water, and suffering for food.  He was discovered and sent back.  If the Constitution of the United States sanctioned such an outrage upon you, what would you think of those who answered your entreaties and remonstrances by saying, “Our fathers made an agreement with the man who robs you of your wages and your freedom.  It is law; and it is your duty to submit to [Transcriber’s note:  word cut off] patiently”?  I think you would then perceive the necessity of having the Constitution forthwith amended; and if it were not done very promptly, I apprehend you would appeal vociferously to a higher law.