Henry David Thoreau
 


   Slavery in Massachusetts


    I lately attended a meeting of the citizens of Concord, expecting,  as  one 
among many, to speak on the subject of slavery  in  Massachusetts;  but  I  was 
surprised and disappointed to find that what had called  my  townsmen  together 
was the destiny of Nebraska, and not of Massachusetts, and that what I  had  to 
say would be entirely out of order. I had thought that the house was  on  fire,
and not the prairie; but though several of the citizens  of  Massachusetts  are 
now in prison for attempting to rescue a slave from her own clutches,  not  one 
of the speakers at that meeting expressed regret for it, not one even  referred 
to it. It was only the disposition of some wild  lands  a  thousand  miles  off 
which appeared to concern them.  The inhabitants of Concord are not prepared to 
stand by one of their own bridges, but talk only of taking up a position on the 
highlands beyond the Yellowstone River. Our Buttricks and Davises  and  Hosmers 
are retreating thither, and I fear that they will  leave  no  Lexington  Common 
between them and the enemy. There is not  one  slave  in  Nebraska;  there  are 
perhaps a million slaves in Massachusetts. 

    They who have been bred in the school of politics fail now  and  always  to 
face the facts. Their measures are half measures and  makeshifts  merely.  They 
put off the day of settlement indefinitely, and meanwhile the debt accumulates.
Though the Fugitive Slave Law had not been the subject of  discussion  on  that 
occasion, it was at length faintly resolved by my  townsmen,  at  an  adjourned 
meeting, as I learn, that the compromise compact of 1820 having been repudiated 
by one of the parties, "Therefore,... the Fugitive Slave Law of  1850  must  be 
repealed." But this is not the reason why an iniquitous law should be repealed. 
The fact which the politician faces is merely that there is  less  honor  among 
thieves than was supposed, and not the fact that they are thieves.

    As I had no opportunity to express my thoughts at that  meeting,  will  you 
allow me to do so here?

    Again it happens that the Boston Court-House is full of armed men,  holding 
prisoner and trying a MAN, to find out if he is not really a  SLAVE.  Does  any 
one think that justice or God awaits Mr. Loring's  decision?  For  him  to  sit 
there deciding still, when this question is already decided  from  eternity  to 
eternity, and the unlettered slave himself and the multitude around  have  long 
since heard and assented to the decision, is simply to make himself ridiculous. 
We may be tempted to ask from whom he received his commission, and  who  he  is 
that received it; what novel statutes he obeys, and what precedents are to  him 
of authority. Such an arbiter's very existence is an impertinence.  We  do  not 
ask him to make up his mind, but to make up his pack.

    I listen to hear the voice of a Governor, Commander-in-Chief of the  forces 
of Massachusetts. I hear only the creaking of crickets and the hum  of  insects 
which now fill the summer air. The Governor's exploit is to review  the  troops 
on muster days. I have seen him on horseback, with his hat  off,  listening  to 
a chaplain's prayer.  It  chances  that  that  is  all  I  have  ever  seen  of 
a Governor. I think that I could manage to get along without one.  If he is not 
of the least use to prevent my being kidnapped, pray of what important  use  is 
he likely to be to me? When freedom  is  most  endangered,  he  dwells  in  the 
deepest obscurity.  A  distinguished  clergyman  told  me  that  he  chose  the 
profession of a clergyman because it afforded the  most  leisure  for  literary 
pursuits. I would recommend to him the profession of a Governor. 

    Three years ago, also, when the Sims tragedy was acted, I said  to  myself, 
There is such an officer, if not such a man, as the Governor of Massachusetts - 
what has he been about the last fortnight? Has he had as much as he could do to 
keep on the fence during this moral earthquake?  It seemed to me that no keener 
satire could have been aimed at, no more cutting insult have  been  offered  to 
that man, than just what happened - the absence of all  inquiry  after  him  in 
that crisis. The worst and the most I chance to know of him is that he did  not 
improve that opportunity to make himself known, and worthily known. He could at 
least have resigned himself into fame. It appeared to be forgotten  that  there 
was such a man or such an office. Yet no doubt he was endeavoring to  fill  the 
gubernatorial chair all the while. He was no  Governor  of  mine.  He  did  not 
govern me. 

    But at last, in the present case, the Governor was heard from. After he and
the United States government had perfectly succeeded in robbing a poor innocent 
black man of his liberty for life, and, as far as they could, of his  Creator's 
likeness  in  his  breast,  he  made  a   speech   to   his   accomplices,   at 
a congratulatory supper!

    I have read a recent law of this State,  making it penal for any officer of 
the "Commonwealth" to "detain or aid in the... detention," anywhere within  its 
limits, "of any person, for the reason that he is claimed as a fugitive slave." 
Also, it was a matter of notoriety that a writ of replevin to take the fugitive 
out of the custody of the United States Marshal could not be served for want of 
sufficient force to aid the officer. 

    I had thought that the Governor was, in some sense, the  executive  officer 
of the State; that it was his business, as a Governor, to see that the laws  of 
the State were executed; while, as a man, he took care that he did not,  by  so 
doing, break the laws of humanity; but when there is any special important  use 
for him, he is useless, or worse than useless, and  permits  the  laws  of  the 
State to go  unexecuted.  Perhaps  I  do  not  know  what  are  the  duties  of 
a Governor; but if to be a Governor requires to subject one's self to  so  much 
ignominy without remedy, if it is to put a restraint upon my manhood,  I  shall 
take care never to be Governor of Massachusetts. I have not  read  far  in  the 
statutes of this Commonwealth. It is not profitable reading. They do not always 
say what is true; and they do  not  always  mean  what  they  say.  What  I  am 
concerned to know is, that that man's influence and authority were on the  side 
of the slaveholder, and not of the  slave - of  the  guilty,  and  not  of  the 
innocent - of injustice, and not of justice. I never saw him of whom  I  speak; 
indeed, I did not know that he was Governor until this event occurred. I  heard 
of him and Anthony Burns at the same time, and  thus,  undoubtedly,  most  will 
hear of him. So far am I from being governed by him. I do not mean that it  was 
anything to his discredit that I had not heard of him, only that I heard what I 
did. The worst I shall say of him  is,  that  he  proved  no  better  than  the 
majority of his constituents would be likely to prove. In my  opinion,  be  was 
not equal to the occasion. 

    The whole military force of the State is at the service  of  a  Mr. Suttle, 
a slaveholder from Virginia, to enable him to catch a man  whom  he  calls  his 
property; but not a soldier is offered to save a citizen of Massachusetts  from 
being kidnapped! Is this what all these soldiers, all this training, have  been 
for these seventy-nine years past? Have they been trained merely to rob  Mexico 
and carry back fugitive slaves to their masters? 

    These very nights I heard the sound of a drum in our  streets.  There  were 
men training still; and for what? I could with an effort pardon  the  cockerels 
of Concord for crowing still, for they, perchance, had  not  been  beaten  that 
morning; but I could not excuse this rub-a-dub of the "trainers." The slave was 
carried back by exactly such as these; i.e., by the soldier, of whom  the  best 
you can say in this connection is  that  he  is  a  fool  made  conspicuous  by 
a painted coat. 

    Three years ago,  also,  just  a  week  after  the  authorities  of  Boston 
assembled to carry back a perfectly innocent man, and one whom they knew to  be 
innocent, into slavery, the inhabitants of Concord caused the bells to be  rung 
and the cannons to be fired, to celebrate their liberty - and the  courage  and 
love of liberty of their ancestors who fought at the bridge. As if those  three 
millions had fought for the right to be free themselves, but to hold in slavery 
three million others. Nowadays, men wear a fool's-cap, and call it  a  liberty-
cap. I do not know but there are some who, if they were  tied  to  a  whipping-
post, and could but get one hand free, would use it to ring the bells and  fire 
the cannons to celebrate their liberty. So some of my townsmen took the liberty 
to ring and fire. That was the extent of their freedom; and when the  sound  of 
the bells died away, their liberty died away also;  when  the  powder  was  all 
expended, their liberty went off with the smoke. 

    The joke could be no  broader  if  the  inmates  of  the  prisons  were  to 
subscribe for all the powder to be used in such salutes, and hire  the  jailers 
to do the firing and ringing for  them,  while  they  enjoyed  it  through  the 
grating. 

    This is what I thought about my neighbors.

    Every humane and intelligent inhabitant of Concord, when he  or  she  heard 
those bells and those cannons, thought not with pride of the events of the 19th 
of April, 1775, but with shame of the events of the 12th of  April,  1851.  But 
now we have half buried that old shame under a new one. 

    Massachusetts sat waiting Mr. Loring's decision, as if it could in any  way 
affect her own criminality. Her crime, the most conspicuous and fatal crime  of 
all, was permitting him to be the umpire in such a  case.  It  was  really  the 
trial of Massachusetts.  Every moment that she hesitated to set this man free - 
every moment that she now hesitates to atone for her crime, she  is  convicted. 
The Commissioner on her case is God; not Edward G. God, but simply God. 

    I wish my countrymen to consider, that  whatever  the  human  law  may  be, 
neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the least act  of  injustice 
against the obscurest individual without having to  pay  the  penalty  for  it. 
A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it,  will  at 
length even become the laughing-stock of the world.

    Much has been said about American slavery, but I think that we do not  even 
yet realize what slavery is. If I were seriously to propose to Congress to make 
mankind into sausages,  I have no doubt that most of the members would smile at 
my proposition, and if any believed me to be in earnest, they would think  that 
I proposed something much worse than Congress had ever done. But if any of them 
will tell me that to make a man into a sausage would be much worse  -  would be 
any worse - than to make him into a slave - than it was to enact  the  Fugitive 
Slave Law, I will accuse him of foolishness,  of  intellectual  incapacity,  of 
making a distinction  without  a  difference.  The  one  is  just  as  sensible 
a proposition as the other. 

    I hear a good deal said about trampling this law under foot.  Why, one need 
not go out of his way to do that. This law rises not to the level of  the  head 
or the reason; its natural habitat is in the dirt. It was born  and  bred,  and 
has its life, only in the dust and mire, on a level with the feet; and  he  who 
walks with freedom, and does not with Hindoo  mercy  avoid  treading  on  every 
venomous reptile, will inevitably tread on it, and so trample it  under  foot - 
and Webster, its maker, with it, like the dirt-bug and its ball.

    Recent events will be valuable as a  criticism  on  the  administration  of 
justice in our midst, or, rather, as showing what are  the  true  resources  of 
justice in any community. It has come to this, that the friends of liberty, the 
friends of the slave, have shuddered when they have understood  that  his  fate 
was left to the legal tribunals of the country to be decided. Free men have  no 
faith that justice will be awarded in such a case. The judge  may  decide  this 
way or that; it is a kind of accident, at best. It is evident that  he  is  not 
a competent authority in so important a case.  It  is  no  time,  then,  to  be 
judging according to his precedents, but  to  establish  a  precedent  for  the 
future. I would much rather trust to the sentiment of the people. In their vote 
you would get something of some value, at least,  however  small;  but  in  the 
other case, only the trammeled judgment of an individual, of  no  significance, 
be it which way it might. 

    It is to some extent fatal to the courts,  when the people are compelled to 
go behind them. I do not wish to believe that the courts  were  made  for  fair 
weather, and for very civil cases merely; but think of leaving it to any  court 
in the land to decide whether more than three millions of people, in this  case 
a sixth part of a nation, have a right to be freemen or not! But  it  has  been 
left to the courts of justice, so called - to the Supreme Court of  the  land - 
and, as you all know, recognizing no authority but  the  Constitution,  it  has 
decided that the three millions are and  shall  continue  to  be  slaves.  Such 
judges as these are merely the inspectors of a pick-lock and murderer's  tools, 
to tell him whether they are in working order or not, and there they think that 
their responsibility ends. There was a prior case on the docket, which they, as 
judges appointed by God, had  no  right  to  skip;  which  having  been  justly 
settled, they would have been saved from this humiliation. It was the  case  of 
the murderer himself. 

    The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to  make  the  law 
free. They are the lovers of law  and  order  who  observe  the  law  when  the 
government breaks it. 

    Among human beings, the judge whose words seal the fate of a  man  furthest 
into eternity is not he who merely pronounces the verdict of the law,  but  he, 
whoever he may be, who, from a love of truth, and unprejudiced by any custom or 
enactment of men, utters a true opinion or sentence concerning him.  He  it  is 
that sentences him. Whoever can discern truth has received his commission  from 
a higher source than the chiefest justice in the world  who  can  discern  only 
law. He finds himself constituted judge of the judge. Strange that it should be 
necessary to state such simple truths! 

    I am more and more convinced that, with reference to any  public  question, 
it is more important to know what the country thinks of it than what  the  city 
thinks. The city does not think much. On any moral  question,  I  would  rather 
have the opinion of Boxboro' than of Boston and New York put together. When the 
former speaks, I feel as if somebody had spoken, as if humanity  was  yet,  and 
a reasonable being had asserted its rights - as if some unprejudiced men  among 
the country's hills had at length turned their attention to the subject, and by 
a few sensible words redeemed the reputation of the race. When, in some obscure 
country town, the farmers come together to a special town-meeting,  to  express 
their opinion on some subject which is vexing the land, that, I think,  is  the 
true Congress, and the most respectable one  that  is  ever  assembled  in  the 
United States. 

    It is evident that there are, in this Commonwealth at least,  two  parties, 
becoming more and more distinct - the party of the city, and the party  of  the 
country. I know that the country is mean enough, but I am glad to believe  that 
there is a slight difference in her favor. But as  yet  she  has  few,  if  any 
organs, through which to express herself. The editorials which she reads,  like 
the news, come from the seaboard. Let  us,  the  inhabitants  of  the  country, 
cultivate self-respect. Let us not send to the city for  aught  more  essential 
than our broadcloths and groceries; or, if we read the opinions  of  the  city, 
let us entertain opinions of our own. 

    Among measures to be adopted, I  would  suggest  to  make  as  earnest  and 
vigorous an assault on the press as has already been made, and with effect,  on 
the church. The church has much improved within a few years; but the press  is, 
almost without exception, corrupt. I believe that in  this  country  the  press 
exerts a greater and a more pernicious influence than the  church  did  in  its 
worst period.  We  are  not  a  religious  people,  but  we  are  a  nation  of 
politicians. We do not care for the Bible, but we do care for the newspaper. At 
any meeting of politicians - like  that  at  Concord  the  other  evening,  for 
instance - how impertinent it would be to quote from the Bible!  how  pertinent 
to quote from a newspaper or from the Constitution! The newspaper  is  a  Bible 
which we read every morning and every afternoon, standing and  sitting,  riding 
and walking. It is a Bible which every man carries in his pocket, which lies on 
every table and counter, and which the mail, and thousands of missionaries, are 
continually dispersing. It is, in  short,  the  only  book  which  America  has 
printed and which America reads. So  wide  is  its  influence.  The  editor  is 
a preacher whom you voluntarily support. Your tax is commonly one  cent  daily, 
and it costs nothing for pew hire. But how many of these preachers  preach  the 
truth? I repeat the testimony of many an intelligent foreigner, as well  as  my 
own convictions, when I say, that probably no country was  ever  rubled  by  so 
mean a class of tyrants as, with a few noble exceptions, are the editors of the 
periodical press in this country. And as they  live  and  rule  only  by  their 
servility, and appealing to the worse, and not the better, nature of  man,  the 
people who read them are in the condition of the dog that returns to his vomit. 

    The Liberator and the Commonwealth were the only papers  in  Boston, as far 
as I know, which made themselves heard in condemnation  of  the  cowardice  and 
meanness of the authorities of that  city,  as  exhibited  in  '51.  The  other 
journals, almost without  exception,  by  their  manner  of  referring  to  and 
speaking of the Fugitive Slave Law, and the carrying back of  the  slave  Sims, 
insulted the common sense of the country, at least. And,  for  the  most  part, 
they did this, one would say, because they thought so to secure the approbation 
of their patrons, not being aware that a sounder  sentiment  prevailed  to  any 
extent in the heart of the Commonwealth. I am  told  that  some  of  them  have 
improved of late; but they  are  still  eminently  time-serving.  Such  is  the 
character they have won. 

    But, thank fortune, this preacher can be even more easily  reached  by  the 
weapons of the reformer than could the recreant priest. The  free  men  of  New 
England have only to refrain from purchasing and  reading  these  sheets,  have 
only to withhold their cents, to kill  a  score  of  them  at  once.  One  whom 
I respect told me that he purchased Mitchell's Citizen in the  cars,  and  then 
throw it out the window. But would not his  contempt  have  been  more  fatally 
expressed if he had not bought it? 

    Are they Americans? are  they  New  Englanders?  are  they  inhabitants  of 
Lexington and Concord and Framingham, who read and  support  the  Boston  Post, 
Mail, Journal, Advertiser, Courier, and Times?  Are  these  the  Flags  of  our 
Union? I am not a newspaper reader, and may omit to name the worst. 

    Could slavery suggest a more complete servility than some of these journals 
exhibit? Is there any dust which their conduct does not lick, and  make  fouler 
still with its slime? I do not know whether  the  Boston  Herald  is  still  in 
existence, but I remember to have seen it  about  the  streets  when  Sims  was 
carried off. Did it not act its part  well-serve  its  master  faithfully!  How 
could it have gone lower on its belly? How can a man stoop  lower  than  he  is 
low? do more than put his extremities in the place of the  head  he  has?  than 
make his head his lower extremity? When I have taken  up  this  paper  with  my 
cuffs turned up, I have heard the gurgling of the sewer through every column. I 
have felt that I was handling a paper picked out of the public gutters,  a leaf 
from  the  gospel  of  the  gambling-house,  the  groggery,  and  the  brothel, 
harmonizing with the gospel of the Merchants' Exchange. 

    The majority of the men of the North, and of the South and East  and  West, 
are not men of principle. If they vote, they do not send  men  to  Congress  on 
errands of humanity; but while their brothers and sisters  are  being  scourged 
and hung for loving liberty, while - I  might  here  insert  all  that  slavery 
implies and is - it is the mismanagement of wood and iron and  stone  and  gold 
which concerns them. Do what you will, O Government, with my wife and children, 
my mother and brother, my father and sister, I will obey your commands  to  the 
letter. It will indeed grieve me if you hurt  them,  if  you  deliver  them  to 
overseers to be hunted by bounds or to be whipped to death; but,  nevertheless, 
I will peaceably pursue my chosen calling on this fair earth, until  perchance, 
one day, when I have put on mourning for them dead, I shall have persuaded  you 
to relent. Such is the attitude, such are the words of Massachusetts. 

    Rather than do thus, I need not say what match I would touch,  what  system 
endeavor to blow up; but as I love my life, I would side with  the  light,  and 
let the dark earth roll from under me, calling my  mother  and  my  brother  to 
follow. 

    I would remind my countrymen that they are to be men first,  and  Americans 
only at a late and convenient hour. No  matter  how  valuable  law  may  be  to 
protect your property, even to keep soul and body together, if it do  not  keep 
you and humanity together. 

    I am sorry to say that I doubt if there is a judge in Massachusetts who  is 
prepared to resign his office, and get his living innocently,  whenever  it  is 
required of him to pass sentence under a law which is merely  contrary  to  the 
law of God. I am compelled to see that they put themselves, or  rather  are  by 
character, in this respect, exactly on a level with the marine  who  discharges 
his musket in any direction he is ordered to. They are just as much tools,  and 
as little men. Certainly, they are not the more to be respected, because  their 
master enslaves their understandings and consciences, instead of their bodies. 

    The judges and lawyers  -  simply  as  such,  I  mean  -  and  all  men  of 
expediency, try this  case  by  a  very  low  and  incompetent  standard.  They 
consider, not whether the Fugitive Slave Law is right, but whether it  is  what 
they  call  constitutional.  Is  virtue  constitutional,  or  vice?  Is  equity 
constitutional, or iniquity? In important moral and vital questions, like this, 
it is just as impertinent to ask whether a law is constitutional or not, as  to 
ask whether it is profitable or not. They persist in being the servants of  the 
worst of men, and not the servants of humanity. The question  is,  not  whether 
you or your grandfather, seventy years ago, did not enter into an agreement  to 
serve the Devil, and that service is not accordingly now due; but  whether  you 
will not now, for once and at last, serve  God - in  spite  of  your  own  past 
recreancy, or that of your ancestor - by obeying that  eternal  and  only  just 
CONSTITUTION, which He, and not any Jefferson or Adams,  has  written  in  your 
being.

    The amount of it is, if the majority vote the Devil to be God, the minority 
will live and behave accordingly  and obey the successful candidate,  trusting 
that, some time or other, by some Speaker's  casting-vote,  perhaps,  they  may 
reinstate God. This is the highest principle I can get out  or  invent  for  my 
neighbors. These men act as if they believed that they could safely slide  down 
a hill a little way - or a good way - and would surely come to a place, by  and 
by, where they could begin to slide up again. This is expediency,  or  choosing 
that course which  offers  the  slightest  obstacles  to  the  feet,  that  is, 
a downhill one. But there is no such thing as accomplishing a righteous  reform 
by the use of "expediency." There is no such  thing  as  sliding  up  hill.  In 
morals the only sliders are backsliders. 

    Thus we steadily worship Mammon, both school and state and church,  and  on 
the seventh day curse God with a tintamar from one end  of  the  Union  to  the 
other. 

    Will mankind never learn that policy  is  not  morality  -  that  it  never 
secures any moral right, but considers merely what is  expedient?  chooses  the 
available candidate - who is invariably the Devil - and  what  right  have  his 
constituents to be surprised, because the Devil does not behave like  an  angel 
of light? What is wanted is men, not of policy, but of probity - who  recognize 
a higher law than the Constitution, or the decision of the majority.  The  fate 
of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls - the worst man  is 
as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what  kind  of  paper 
you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from 
your chamber into the street every morning. 

    What should concern  Massachusetts  is  not  the  Nebraska  Bill,  nor  the 
Fugitive Slave Bill, but her own slaveholding  and  servility.  Let  the  State 
dissolve her union with the slaveholder. She may wriggle and hesitate, and  ask 
leave to read the Constitution once more; but she can find no  respectable  law 
or precedent which sanctions the continuance of such a union for an instant. 

    Let each inhabitant of the State dissolve his union with her,  as  long  as 
she delays to do her duty. 

    The events of the past month teach me to distrust Fame. I see that she does 
not finely discriminate, but coarsely hurrahs. She  considers  not  the  simple 
heroism  of  an  action,  but  only  as  it  is  connected  with  its  apparent 
consequences. She praises till she is hoarse the easy exploit of the Boston tea 
party,  but  will  be  comparatively  silent  about   the   braver   and   more 
disinterestedly heroic attack on the Boston Court-House, simply because it  was 
unsuccessful! 

    Covered with disgrace, the State has sat down coolly to try for their lives 
and liberties the men who attempted to do its duty for it. And this  is  called 
justice! They who have  shown  that  they  can  behave  particularly  well  may 
perchance be put under bonds for their good behavior. They whom truth  requires 
at present  to  plead  guilty  are,  of  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  State, 
preeminently innocent.  While  the  Governor,  and  the  Mayor,  and  countless 
officers of the Commonwealth  are  at  large,  the  champions  of  liberty  are 
imprisoned. 

    Only they are guiltless who commit the crime of contempt of such  a  court. 
It behooves every man to see that his influence is on the side of justice,  and 
let the courts make their own characters. My sympathies in this case are wholly 
with the accused, and wholly against their  accusers  and  judges.  Justice  is 
sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant. The judge still  sits 
grinding at his organ, but it yields no music, and we hear only  the  sound  of 
the handle. He believes that all the music resides in the handle, and the crowd 
toss him their coppers the same as before. 

    Do you suppose that that Massachusetts which is now  doing  these  things - 
which hesitates to crown these men, some of whose  lawyers,  and  even  judges, 
perchance, may be driven to take refuge in some poor quibble, that they may not 
wholly outrage their instinctive sense of justice - do you suppose that she  is 
anything but base and servile? that she is the champion of liberty?

    Show me a free state, and a court truly of justice, and I  will  fight  for 
them, if need be; but show me Massachusetts, and I refuse  her  my  allegiance, 
and express contempt for her courts. 

    The effect of a good government is to make life more  valuable - of  a  bad 
one, to make it less valuable. We can  afford  that  railroad  and  all  merely 
material stock should lose some of its value, for that only compels us to  live 
more simply and economically; but suppose that the value of life itself  should 
be diminished! How can we make a less demand on man and nature, how  live  more 
economically in respect to virtue and all noble qualities, than we do?  I  have 
lived for the last month - and I think that every man in Massachusetts  capable 
of the sentiment of patriotism must have had a similar experience  -  with  the 
sense of having suffered a vast and indefinite loss. I did not  know  at  first 
what ailed me. At last it occurred to me that what I had lost  was  a  country. 
I had never respected the government near to which I lived, but I had foolishly 
thought that I might manage to live  here,  minding  my  private  affairs,  and 
forget it. For my part, my old and worthiest pursuits have lost  I  cannot  say 
how much of their attraction, and I feel that my investment  in  life  here  is 
worth many per cent less since Massachusetts last  deliberately  sent  back  an 
innocent man, Anthony Burns, to  slavery.  I  dwelt  before,  perhaps,  in  the 
illusion that my life passed somewhere only between heaven and  hell,  but  now 
I cannot persuade myself that I do not dwell wholly within hell.  The  site  of 
that political organization called Massachusetts is to me morally covered  with 
volcanic scoriae and cinders, such as Milton describes in the infernal regions. 
If there is any hell more unprincipled than our  rulers,  and  we,  the  ruled, 
I feel curious to see it. Life itself being worth less,  all  things  with  it, 
which minister to it, are worth less. Suppose you have a  small  library,  with 
pictures to adorn the walls - a  garden  laid  out  around  -  and  contemplate 
scientific and literary pursuits and discover all at once that your villa, with 
all its contents is located in hell, and that the  justice  of  the  peace  has 
a cloven foot and a forked tail - do not these things suddenly lose their value 
in your eyes? 

    I feel that, to some extent, the  State  has  fatally  interfered  with  my 
lawful business. It has not only interrupted me in  my  passage  through  Court 
Street on errands of trade, but it has interrupted me  and  every  man  on  his 
onward and upward path, on which he had trusted soon to leave Court Street  far 
behind. What right had it to remind me of  Court  Street?  I  have  found  that 
hollow which even I had relied on for solid. 

    I am surprised to see men going about their  business  as  if  nothing  had 
happened. I say to myself, "Unfortunates! they have not heard the news."  I  am 
surprised that the man whom I just met on horseback should  be  so  earnest  to 
overtake his newly bought cows running away - since all property  is  insecure, 
and if they do not run away again, they may be taken away from him when he gets 
them.  Fool! does he not know that his seed-corn is worth less this year - that 
all beneficent harvests fail as you approach the empire of hell? No prudent man 
will build a stone house under these circumstances, or engage in  any  peaceful 
enterprise which it requires a long time to accomplish. Art is as long as ever, 
but life is more interrupted and less available for a man's proper pursuits. It 
is not an era of repose. We have used up all our inherited freedom. If we would 
save our lives, we must fight for them. 

    I walk toward one of our ponds; but what signifies  the  beauty  of  nature 
when men are base? We walk to lakes to see our serenity reflected in them; when 
we are not serene, we go not to them. Who can be serene in a country where both 
the rulers and the ruled are without principle? The remembrance of  my  country 
spoils my walk. My thoughts are murder  to  the  State,  and  involuntarily  go 
plotting against her. 

    But it chanced the other  day  that  I  scented  a  white  water-lily,  and 
a season I had waited for had arrived. It is the emblem of purity. It bursts up 
so pure and fair to the eye, and so sweet to the scent, as if to show  us  what 
purity and sweetness reside in, and can be extracted from, the slime  and  muck 
of earth. I think I have plucked the first one that has opened for a mile. What 
confirmation of our hopes is in the fragrance of this flower! I  shall  not  so 
soon despair of the world for it, notwithstanding slavery,  and  the  cowardice 
and want of principle of Northern men. It  suggests  what  kind  of  laws  have 
prevailed longest and widest, and still prevail, and that  the  time  may  come 
when man's deeds will smell as sweet. Such is the odor which the  plant  emits. 
If Nature can compound this fragrance still annually, I shall believe her still 
young and full of vigor, her integrity and genius unimpaired, and that there is 
virtue even in man, too, who is fitted to perceive and love it. It  reminds  me 
that Nature has been partner to no Missouri Compromise. I scent  no  compromise 
in the fragrance of the water-lily. It is not a Nymphoea Douglasii. In it,  the 
sweet, and pure, and innocent are wholly sundered from the obscene and baleful. 
I do not scent  in  this  the  time-serving  irresolution  of  a  Massachusetts 
Governor, nor of a Boston Mayor. So behave that the odor of  your  actions  may 
enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere, that when we behold or scent a 
flower, we may not be reminded how inconsistent your deeds are with it; for all 
odor is but one form of advertisement of a moral quality, and if  fair  actions 
had not been performed, the lily would not smell sweet. The foul  slime  stands 
for the sloth and vice of man, the decay of humanity; the fragrant flower  that 
springs from it, for the purity and courage which are immortal. 

    Slavery and servility have produced no sweet-scented  flower  annually,  to 
charm the senses of men, for they have no real life: they are merely a decaying 
and a death, offensive to all healthy nostrils. We do not  complain  that  they 
live, but that they do not get buried.  Let the living bury them: even they are 
good for manure. 

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