The Fugitive Slave Bill-Federal Consistency

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL-FEDERAL CONSISTENCY

It affords us no little amusement, when seated in our sanctum, poring over our different exchange papers in search of news, to witness the Jim Crow articles of the Federal organs, on the subject of the Fugitive Slave Law. They all wish to display a wonderful amount of philanthropy for the suffering portion of mankind who are in bondage, by hurling terrible anathamas at every democratic member of Congress who supported the bill. But then they find an obstacle in the way, and they are puzzled to know how to denounce Democrats on account of their course, and praise Federalists for having pursued a similar one, They see the inconsistency—they see that it is so glaring that every one must notice it—but yet it must be done. They are anxious to make fair weather with the abolitionists, and to do this they denounce the Fugitive Slave Law and the Democrats who supported it; but yet they must praise and applaud the members of Congress of their own party who supported the same law! How can this be done? There’s the rub. Federal ingenuity alone can find a way to overcome the difficulty. We therefore find in the Federal papers one column devoted to the abuse of Democrats for having supported this law, and in a separate article, in another column, we find President Fillmore, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and other prominent men of the Federal party landed and praised because of the love for the Union they exhibited, in giving their support to this same Fugitive Slave Bill! That’s the way Federal editors get over a difficulty!
Our neighbor of the Herald was in some such predicament as this immediately after the passage of the law. In one column he had an article on the subject, in which he denounced the law as disgraceful to the country—as an insult to the North, and the “locofocos” who aided its passage as traitors to humanity. In another article in the same paper, President Fillmore is landed to the skies for giving peace and harmony once more to our beloved Union, by securing the passage, and seating with his “approval” the Compromise measure, of which the Fugitive Slave Bill was the head and front! How out neighbor reconciled these two positions with his conscience we cannot understand. Perhaps he had been studying ethicks under a new professor.
We find that the North American, the Harrisburg Telegraph, the Pittsburg Gazette, the Lancaster Tribune, and indeed nearly all the Federal papers of the State, have placed themselves in the same awkward dilemma. Such recklessness and total disregard for sincerity and truth should be sufficient to disgust every honest and honorable man. These papers, week after week, flatter and applaud President Fillmore, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster for their “patriotism and disinterested love of country, in staking their personal popularity for the sake of the Union.” They know that Henry Clay was the father and great advocate of every section of the Compromise Bill, and that Fillmore and Webster were no less ardent in their support. They know that the Fugitive Slave Law was one of the great essential section of that bill, without which all the other were worthless. And yet, while they lavish the most extravagant praise on these leaders of their party for their support of the bill, they denounce, as almost devils, every Democrat who, for the sake of the Union, and for the sake of peace, pursued the same course! Oh, consistency!—Shame, where is they blush?
A Real “Fire Eater.”—It appears that Virginia has a few fools yet, who prate flippantly about a dissolution of the Union, and advocate non-intercourse between the North and the South. On the 2d inst. A dinner was given to Messers. Mason and Hunter, at Warrentown, Va., at which a great amount of steam was left off. The little squad composing the dinner party, are dissatisfied, it seems, with the compromise bills passed by Congress, and they swear in their wrath that they the dinner party, will demolish the North body and breeches. Oh, don’t—don’t if you please, Messers. Fire eaters. From the volunteer toasts drunk on the occasion of this dinner party, we select the following specimen. Mr. Smith, we think, had better go to school for a spell before he undertakes a swallow the North. If one of our raw-boned Yankees should get their hands on this fellow he would stand a chance to receive a good spanking:
By A.E. Smith—The North:
We know her not, we loather her [illegible],
But in her lineaments we trace
What compromise will strengthen, not effeace;
Right well we view and deem her one
Whom Southern sons should slay of shun.
The first and last lines of the above toast are particularly striking; the North is not known but is loathed in the first line, and in the last the sons of the South are called upon to slay or shun the sons of the North. Mr. Smith, no doubt, would adopt the latter, and “shun” Northern sons, particularly in a fight. He is a real “fire eater,” surely, this Mr. Smith, and we recommend that Barnum [illegible] him for a show.