Record Data
Source citation
"To the Slave Owners of the South," Charleston (SC) Mercury, October 24, 1850, p. 2.
Newspaper: Publication
Charleston (SC) Mercury
Newspaper: Headline
To the Slave Owners of the South
Newspaper: Page(s)
2
Type
Newspaper
Date Certainty
Exact
Transcriber
Sayo Ayodele
Transcription date
Transcription
The following text is presented here in complete form, as it originally appeared in print. Spelling and typographical errors have been preserved as in the original.
[FOR THE MERCURY.]
To the Slave Owners of the South.
"Strike while the iron's hot."
There are many hundred fugitive slaves in the non-slaveholding, anti-slavery States. The execution of the Fugitive Slave Bill depends on the officers of the Federal Government, wherever a fugitive slave may be found, and demanded by the owner, or his agent. Popular resistance is threatened. Federal Marshals announce their intention to resign office, if called on the execute the law. Let every slave owner, who can learn where his runaway is, communicate the intelligence to the President of the Southern Rights Association nearest to him. Let every Southern Rights Association offer a reward throughout the North, by means more effectual than newspaper advertisement - the employment for a special travelling agent for each State, for information as to the name, residence, and owner of every runway at the North. Let the Fugitive Slave Bill be promptly applied to every case that can be made throughut the entire North. Thus their people will have the issue made between slaves and their friends on one side, and the constitutional law of the Union on the other. Order or anarchy will prevail, to the overthrow of the other. Anticipate the political question of the repeal of this law, by the legal one of its execution by force against force. Let philanthropy murder at the North, as well as steal from the South.
The people of the non-slaveholding States will be then engaged with the slaves and their friends at home, and will be unable to combine for the legislative plunder, oppression and degradation of the South.
The North have a magazine of combustibles among themselves. The Southern slaveholders have the torch. Fire the train. "Fight not HANNIBAL on the plains of Italy, but carry the war into Africa."
SCIPIO.