a nominally Christian family—­whose master was most liberal in support of the Gospel, and whose mistress was a communicant at the Lord’s table, and a professed follower of Christ!  Here, in this family, where slavery is found in its mildest form, she had been kept in ignorance of God’s will and word, and learned to know that the mildest form of American slavery, at this day of Christian civilization and Democratic liberty, was worse than death itself!  She had learned by an experience of many years, that it was so bad she had rather take the life of her own dearest child, without the hope of Heaven for herself, than that it should experience its unutterable agonies, which were to be found even in a Christian family!  But here are her two little boys, of eight and ten years of age.  Taking the eldest boy by the hand, the preacher said to him, kindly and gently, “Come here, my boy; what is your name?” “Tom, sir.”  “Yes, Thomas.”  “No sir, Tom.”  “Well, Tom, how old are you?” “Three months.”  “And how old is your little brother?” “Six months, sir!” “And have you no other name but Tom?” “No.”  “What is your father’s name?” “Haven’t got any!” “Who made you, Tom?” “Nobody!” “Did you ever hear of God or Jesus Christ?” “No, sir.”  And this was slavery in its best estate.  By and by the aged couple, and the young man and his wife, the remaining children, with the master, and the dead body of the little one, were escorted through the streets of the Queen City of the West by a national guard of armed men, back to the great and chivalrous State of old Kentucky and away to the shambles of the South—­back to a life-long servitude of hopeless despair.  It was a long, sad, silent procession down to the banks of the Ohio; and as it passed, the death-knell of freedom tolled heavily.  The sovereignty of Ohio trailed in the dust beneath the oppressor’s foot, and the great confederacy of the tribes of modern Israel attended the funeral obsequies, and made ample provision for the necessary expenses!  “And it was so, that all that saw it, said, There was no such deed done, nor seen from the day that the children of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt unto this day; CONSIDER OF IT, TAKE ADVICE, AND SPEAK YOUR MINDS!”

* * * * *

With the sad case of MARGARET GARNER we close, for the present, the record of the Fugitive Slave Law, as its history has been daily writing itself in our country’s annals.  Enactment of hell! which has marked every step of its progress over the land by suffering and by crimes,—­crimes of the bloodiest dye, groanings which cannot fully be uttered; which is tracked by the dripping blood of its victims, by their terrors and by their despair; against which, and against that Wicked Nation which enacted it, and which suffers it still to stand as their LAW, the cries of the down-trodden poor go up continually into the ears of God,—­cries of bitterest anguish, mingled with fiercest execrations—­thousands of Rachels weeping for their children, and will not be comforted, because they are not.