And can it be that a man’s right to his own freedom cannot be tried by a jury, when, if two men dispute about his value, each may claim the jury trial, and cannot be denied?

I might here rest the argument, feeling that, from authority and from reason, from the old and time-honored principles of the common law, as well as from those interpretations of the constitution which have been given by the supreme court…

It is alleged that the whole force of the above argument, otherwise conclusive, is annulled, because a slave is no party to the constitution, is not under its protecting shield any more than a horse or an ox, and therefore, any provisions…

What he has, he has ex gratia, by the good will of those who own him, body and soul, and who are graciously pleased to forego some of their legal rights from generosity in themselves, and not from justice to him.

By the laws of the free states, we know no such being as a slave.

The commissioner declares a prima facie freeman to be a slave.

He declares that James Potter owns Thomas Sims, and the posterity in his loins forever; or that Thomas Sims and his posterity forever, owe service to James Potter and his heirs and assigns forever.

But to send a man to be worked to death in five years on a sugar plantation, where his being taught to read the gospel of Jesus Christ is a felony,--this is “special and limited,” and so may be done by any hireling commissioner who will do…

Let them classify it and denounce it, and detest it, as belonging to that impious and blasphemous kind of arguments by which our first parents were beguiled, when Satan told them that, though they sinned against God, they should not die…

Webster cajoled and cozened so many honest men, when he assured them, that though they should violate the moral law, by opening all the territories to slavery, yet some physical law of geography or the weather would avert the penalties.

Where could he find a bandage of prejudice thick enough to blind him to the distinction, that the condition of delivering up the former is that he be charged with crime, while the condition of delivering up the latter is that he be held to…

Such reasonable suspicion of guilt as justifies a grand jury in finding a bill of indictment is sufficient in the one case, but such positive proof as would require the court to enter up judgment and award execution is absolutely necessary…

The government demanding a fugitive from justice seeks possession of him for a trial, before a court and jury, of the question of criminality; but the claimant of an alleged fugitive from service seeks possession of him to avoid a trial…

An alleged fugitive from justice is not adjudged to be a criminal previous to delivery, nor is he made a criminal, in the eye of the law, by the act of delivery.

But the alleged fugitive from service is adjudged a slave, and made a slave by the certificate of the commissioner.

But the receiver of an alleged fugitive from service owns him, and may proceed to control him, and beat him, and rob him, and starve him, on the very instant that the commissioner puts the certificate into his hands.

The law is beneficent to them; it saves its terrors for the slave.

He says that, to authorize the delivery of a fugitive from justice, in order to his removal, “it must be proved that he has committed a crime.” Such a declaration was never made before, and I do not believe it will be ever made again.

But as though this was not absurd enough, the commissioner goes on to say, that though the alleged fugitive from justice must be proved, in the place where he is taken, “to have committed a crime,” yet, after his removal, he must be proved…

How can a man be proved, in any legal way, to have committed a crime, without being confronted with the witnesses against him?

Adam Gibson, Henry Long, Thomas Sims, and many others, some of them now acknowledged on all hands to have been free, have been sent into slavery without this trial.

No man shall be deprived of liberty or property, except by the jury trial.

These men have been deprived of liberty and property without the jury trial.

Now fill up the space between them with what you please, and call it argument, law, gospel, or what you will, every body must see that it is nothing, and can be nothing but Mephistophiles’ jugglery.

I dismiss this point with a single proposition: In Massachusetts, we know no legal distinction founded on color.