leave to address a few words to the court and audience.
Leave being granted, he spoke as follows:
I have a few words which I wish to address to the court, jury and prosecutors, in the several suits that have been brought against me during the sittings of this court, in order to determine the amount of penalty I must pay for doing what my feelings prompted me to do as a lawful and meritorious act; a simple act of humanity and justice, as I believed, to eight of that oppressed race, the people of color, whom I found in the Newcastle jail, in the 12th month, 1845. I will now endeavor to state the facts of those cases, for your consideration and reflection after you return home to your families and friends. You will then have time to ponder on what has transpired here since the sitting of this court, and I believe that your verdict will then be unanimous, that the law of the United States, as explained by our venerable judge, when compared with the act committed by me, was cruel and oppressive, and needs remodelling.
Here follows a very brief and clear statement of the facts in the case, of which the reader is already apprized.
After showing conclusively that he had no reason to suppose the family to be slaves, and that they had all been discharged by the judge, he nobly adds the following words:
Had I believed every one of them to be slaves, I should have done the same thing. I should have done violence to my convictions of duty, had I not made use of all the lawful means in my power to liberate those people, and assist them to become men and women, rather than leave them in the condition of chattels personal.
I am called an Abolitionist; once a name of reproach, but one I have ever been proud to be considered worthy of being called. For the last twenty-five years I have been engaged in the cause of this despised and much-injured race, and consider their cause worth suffering for; but, owing to a multiplicity of other engagements, I could not devote so much of my time and mind to their cause as I otherwise should have done.
The impositions and persecutions practised on those unoffending and innocent brethren are extreme beyond endurance. I am now placed in a situation in which I have not so much to claim my attention as formerly; and I now pledge myself, in the presence of this assembly, to use all lawful and honorable means to lessen the burdens of this oppressed people, and endeavor, according to ability furnished, to burst their chains asunder, and set them free; not relaxing my efforts on their behalf while blessed with health, and a slave remains to tread the soil of the state of my adoption—Delaware.
After mature reflection, I can assure this assembly it is my opinion at this time that the verdicts you have given the prosecutors against John Hunn and myself, within the past few days, will have a tendency to raise a spirit of inquiry throughout the length and breadth of the land, respecting this monster evil (slavery), in many minds that have not heretofore investigated the subject. The reports of those trials will be published by editors from Maine to Texas and the far West; and what must be the effect produced? It will, no doubt, add hundreds, perhaps thousands, to the present large and rapidly increasing army of abolitionists. The injury is great to us who are the immediate sufferers by your verdict; but I believe the verdicts you have given against us within the last few days will have a powerful effect in bringing about the abolition of slavery in this country, this land of boasted freedom, where not only the slave is fettered at the South by his lordly master, but the white man at the North is bound as in chains to do the bidding of his Southern masters.
In his letter to the writer John Garret adds, that after this speech a young man who had served as juryman came across the room, and taking him by the hand, said:
“Old gentleman, I believe every statement that you have made. I came from home prejudiced against you, and I now acknowledge that I have helped to do you injustice.”
Thus calmly and simply did this Quaker confess Christ before men, according as it is written of them of old—“He esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt.”
Christ has said, “Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and my words, of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed.” In our days it is not customary to be ashamed of Christ personally, but of his words many are ashamed. But when they meet Him in judgment they will have cause to remember them; for heaven and earth shall pass away, but His word shall not pass away.
Another case of the same kind is of a more affecting character.
Richard Dillingham was the son of a respectable Quaker family in Morrow County, Ohio. His pious mother brought him up in the full belief of the doctrine of St. John, that the love of God and the love of man are inseparable. He was diligently taught in such theological notions as are implied in such passages as these: “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us; and we ought also to lay down our lives for the brethren.—But whoso hath this world’s goods and seeth his brother have need and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?—My little children, let us not love in word and in tongue, but in deed and in truth.”
In accordance with these precepts, Richard Dillingham, in early manhood, was found in Cincinnati teaching the colored people, and visiting in the prisons and doing what in him lay to “love in deed and in truth.”
Some unfortunate families among the colored people had dear friends who were slaves in Nashville, Tennessee. Richard was so interested in their story, that when he went into Tennessee he was actually taken up and caught in the very fact of helping certain poor people to escape to their friends.
He was seized and thrown into prison. In the language of this world he was imprisoned as a “negro-stealer.” His own account is given in the following letter to his parents:
Nashville Jail, 12th mo. 15th, 1849.
Dear Parents: I presume you have heard of my arrest and imprisonment in the Nashville jail, under a charge of aiding in an attempted escape of slaves from the city of Nashville, on the 5th inst. I was arrested by M. D. Maddox (district constable), aided by Frederick Marshal, watchman at the Nashville Inn, and the bridge-keeper, at the bridge across the Cumberland river. When they arrested me, I had rode up to the bridge on horseback and paid the toll for myself and for the hack to pass over, in which three colored persons, who were said to be slaves, were found by the men who arrested me. The driver of the hack (who is a free colored man of this city), and the persons in the hack, were also arrested; and after being taken to the Nashville Inn and searched, we were all taken to jail. My arrest took place about eleven o’clock at night.
In another letter he says:
At the bridge, Maddox said to me, “You are just the man we wanted. We will make an example of you.” As soon as we were safe in the bar-room of the inn, Maddox took a candle and looked me in the face, to see if he could recognize my countenance; and looking intently at me a few moments, he said, “Well, you are too good-looking a young man to be engaged in such an affair as this.” The bystanders asked me several questions, to which I replied that under the present circumstances I would rather be excused from answering any questions relating to my case; upon which they desisted from further inquiry. Some threats and malicious wishes were uttered against me by the ruffian part of the assembly, being about twenty-five persons. I was put in a cell which had six persons in it, and I can assure thee that they were very far from being agreeable companions to me, although they were kind. But thou knows that I do not relish cursing and swearing, and worst of all loathsome and obscene blasphemy; and of such was most of the conversation of my prison mates when I was first put in here. The jailers are kind enough to me, but the jail is so constructed that it cannot be warmed, and we have to either warm ourselves by walking in our cell, which is twelve by fifteen feet, or by lying in bed. I went out to my trial on the 16th of last month, and put it off till
