“I have almost done. But something has occurred this session which illustrates the Senator’s manner. Not content with making his own speeches, he interrupted the Senator from Missouri [Mr. GEYER], and desired him to insert in his speech an assault on Massachusetts. Here are his words.
“‘I wish my friend would incorporate into his speech an old law of Massachusetts which I have found. I would remind my friend of an old league between the four New England States, made while they were colonies, expressly repudiating trial by jury for the reclamation of fugitive slaves. They called them “slaves,” too, or rather “fugitive servants”; and they say they shall be delivered up on the certificate of one magistrate.’
“Here is another instance of the Senator’s looseness of assertion, even on law, upon the knowledge of which he has plumed himself in this debate. Sir, there were no slaves in Massachusetts at that day. The law alluded to was passed in 1643. It was not until 1646, three years afterward, that the first slaves were imported into Massachusetts from the coast of Africa, and these very slaves were sent back to their native land at public expense. The following is a verbatim copy of the remarkable statute by which these Africans were returned to Guinea, at the expense of the Commonwealth.
“‘The General Court, conceiving themselves bound by the first opportunity to bear witness against the heinous and crying sin of man-stealing, as also to prescribe _such timely redress for what is past, and such a law for the future, at may sufficiently deter all others belonging to us to have to do in such vile and most odious courses, justly abhorred of all good and just men_, do order that the negro interpreter, with others unlawfully taken, be, by the first opportunity, at the charge of the country for present, sent to his native country of Guinea, and a letter with him, of the indignation of the Court thereabouts, and justice hereof.’
“In the face of this Act of 1646, the learned Senator from South Carolina wished his friend from Missouri to incorporate into his speech a false accusation against Massachusetts and the New England colonies. And he went so far as to assert that this old law contained an allusion to ‘slaves,’ when the word ‘slaves’ was not mentioned, and ‘servants’ only was employed.