The life of such a man is a perpetual agony of alarm for himself and for his family.

A brave heart could withhold a false confession, even upon the rack.

With the images of wife and children before the eyes, martyrdom for their protection has been sweet.

I say that a law so worthy of abhorrence, so truculent, so fiendish, is not to be found upon the statute book of any other civilized nation on the globe.

The law might just as well have made color conclusive, not only that the respondent was a slave, but that he ran away from the man who claims him.

The law, as it stands, is as much a slave-making as it is a slave-catching law.

Yet for decreeing the freedom of a man, the fee is but half as much as when a sentence of bondage is awarded against him.

This surpasses the bribery of Judas by the high priests.

The “summary manner” of trial provided for by this law, when considered in reference to rights so momentous, shocks every Anglo-Saxon mind.

One’s blood must all be corrupted in his veins, before he can hear of it without indignation.

It is the noblest attribute of our race, that we hold civil and religious liberty to be more sacred and more precious than life itself.

Yet by what safeguards of constitution, of law, and of forms of practice, is life protected amongst us?

There must be a presentment, by at least twelve sworn men, before a man can be held to answer to a charge by which it can be forfeited.

Then come the traverse jury, the right of peremptory challenge, the assignment of counsel, the right to see the indictment beforehand, and to know the names of witnesses who are to be called against the accused, and compulsory process to…

What noble barriers are these against the oppression of a powerful government, and the malignant passions of powerful men!

Let me ask any man who ever had a case in court that was worth defending, whether he was prepared to meet it the first hour he had notice of its existence?

All these obstacles to instantaneous readiness may exist together, and yet the inexorable mandate of the law scorns his appeal for that delay on which his highest interests are suspended, and dooms him to bondage because he cannot achieve…

Under such a law, not one man in ten who will be arrested, even though he should be free, will be prepared to establish his freedom.

A great portion of these outcasts from human justice, I doubt not, are better prepared for the summons of instantaneous death than for this summons of instantaneous trial.

The murderer is allowed a season of respite between the hour of sentence and the hour of death; the debtor may turn out goods to satisfy a creditor’s demands; but the alleged fugitive has no reprieve.

Swift and sure as an arrow to its mark, he is speeded on his way to the abodes of toil and despair.

The witnesses who swore away his liberty may have been perjured, but he cannot stop to convict them.

Overstepping the acts of the common tyrant, there is an infliction of the most heinous wrong, with a premeditated purpose that it shall not be repaired.

The great and free republic of North America has transferred the unwritten law of Judge Lynch to its statute book.

However clear the constitutional obligation of Congress to enact a law for the reclamation of fugitive slaves may be supposed by any one to be, there certainly are limitations to this obligation, which all the principles of our government…