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The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 9, An Appeal To The Legislators Of Massachusetts by Lydia Maria Francis Child
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fifteen States have thus agreed among themselves: "Other men shall
work for us, without wages while we smoke, and drink, and gamble,
and race horses, and fight. We will have their wives and daughters
for concubines, and sell their children in the market with horses
and pigs. If they make any objection to this arrangement, we will
break them into subjection with the cow-hide and the bucking-paddle.
They shall not be permitted to read or write, because that would be
likely to 'produce dissatisfaction in their minds.' If they attempt
to run away from us, our blood-hounds shall tear the flesh from
their bones, and any man who sees them may shoot them down like mad
dogs. If they succeed in getting beyond our frontier, into States
where it is the custom to pay men for their work, and to protect
their wives and children from outrage, we will compel the people of
those States to drive them back into the jaws of our blood-hounds."

And what do the people of the other eighteen States of that
enlightened country answer to this monstrous demand? What says
Massachusetts, with the free blood of the Puritans coursing in her
veins, and with the sword uplifted in her right hand, to procure
"peaceful repose under liberty"? Massachusetts answers: "O yes. We
will be your blood-hounds, and pay our own expenses. Only prove to
our satisfaction that the stranger who has taken refuge among us is
one of the men you have agreed among yourselves to whip into working
without wages, and we will hunt him back for you. Only prove to us
that this woman, who has run away from your harem, was bought for a
concubine, that you might get more drinking-money by the sale of the
children she bears you, and our soldiers will hunt her back with
alacrity."

Shame on my native State! Everlasting shame! Blot out the escutcheon
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