Constantly we are informed of efforts at New York, through the agency of the Government, and sometimes only on the breath of suspicion, to arrest vessels about to sail on foreign voyages in violation of our neutrality laws or treaty stipulations. Now no man familiar with the cases will presume to suggest that the urgency for these arrests is equal to the urgency for interposition against these successive invasions from Missouri. But the Slave Power is not disturbed by such arrests in New York.
At this moment the President exults in the vigilance with which he prevented the enlistment of a few soldiers, for transportation to Halifax, in breach of our territorial sovereignty, and England is bravely threatened, even to the extent of rupture of diplomatic relations, for her endeavor, though unsuccessful, and at once abandoned.[80] No man in his senses will urge that this act was anything but trivial by the side of the Crime against Kansas. But the Slave Power is not concerned in this controversy.
Thus, where the Slave Power is indifferent, the President will see that the laws are faithfully executed; but in other cases, where the interests of Slavery are at stake, he is controlled absolutely by this tyranny, ready at all times to do, or not to do, precisely as it dictates. Therefore it is that Kansas is left a prey to the Propagandists of Slavery, while the whole Treasury, the Army, and Navy of the United States are lavished to hunt a single slave through the streets of Boston. You have not forgotten the latter instance; but I choose to refresh it in your minds.
As long ago as 1851 the War Department and Navy Department concurred in placing the forces of the United States near Boston at the command of the Marshal, if needed for the enforcement of an Act of Congress which is without support in the public conscience, as I believe it without support in the Constitution; and thus these forces were degraded to the loathsome work of slave-hunters. More than three years afterwards an occasion arose for their intervention. A fugitive from Virginia, who for some days had trod the streets of Boston as a freeman, was seized as a slave. The whole community was aroused, while Bunker Hill and Faneuil Hall quaked with responsive indignation. Then, Sir, the President, anxious that no tittle of Slavery should suffer, was curiously eager in the enforcement of the statute. The despatches between him and his agents in Boston attest his zeal. Here are some of them.