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The following documents are the property of:
The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center
77 Forest Street
Hartford, CT 06105
860-522-9258
These documents were used in conjunction with a Teacher Institute, held at the Stowe Center from July 16 - 21, 2001 entitled, "This Question of Slavery": Perspectives From Primary Sources.
Teachers may use any of the documents for educational purposes only. Any other use of the documents, including reprint, requires written permission from The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center.
The 12 documents have been divided into three categories, related to (1) The Fugitive Slave Law and the Issue of Individual Morality; (2) The Gag Rule Controversy in Congress; and (3) Slavery in General.
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- Topic: The Fugitive Slave Law and The Issue of Individual Morality
 The Religious Duty of Disobedience to Law: A Sermon Preached in the Second Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn (15,550K - Note: This is a rather large file and it may take a while to download depending on your connection speed.), November 24, 1850 by Ichabod S. Spencer, D.D. New York: M.W. Dodd, 1850. Spencer argues not whether slavery is right or the Fugitive Slave Law is right but whether law will be resisted or obeyed. He pleads for obedience to the law and for peace rather than violence, bloodshed and confusion.
- The Duty of Disobedience To The Fugitive Slave Act: An Appeal to the Legislators of Massachusetts by L. Maria Child (29,037K - Note: This is a rather large file and it may take a while to download depending on your connection speed.) From Anti-Slavery Tracts. No. 9. Boston: The American Anti-Slavery Society, 1860. With emotional and fiery language, Lydia Maria Child begs the legislature of MA to "reform this great wickedness...for the honor of the State, for the political welfare of our own people, for the moral character of our posterity."
- The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims (43,881K - Note: This is a rather large file and it may take a while to download depending on your connection speed.) From Anti-Slavery Tracts. No. 18. The document lists scores of names of fugitive slaves as well as dates and places of incidents in which they are chased, seized, kidnapped and re-enslaved.
- Speech of John Hossack, Convicted of a Violation of the Fugitive Slave Law, Before Judge Drummond of the United States District Court, Chicago, Ill (6,649K - Note: This is a rather large file and it may take a while to download depending on your connection speed.) New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1860. Hossack, a Scottish immigrant, grain dealer and upright citizen, proclaims that he should not be sentenced for violation of this law, because "it is the inhuman and infamous law that is wrong, not me."
- Topic: The Gag Rule Controversy in Congress
- On the Abolition Petitions, Delivered in the Senate, March 9th, 1836 by John C. Calhoun (22,706K - Note: This is a rather large file and it may take a while to download depending on your connection speed.) From Speeches of John C. Calhoun, edited by Richard K. Cralle, 1853, pp. 465 - 490. Calhoun is addressing the question of receiving petitions from Pennsylvania for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. He states the view that the petitions "contain nothing requiring the action of the Senate, but that the petitions are highly mischievous, as tending to agitate and distract the country, and to endanger the Union itself."
- Speech of Mr. Cushing, of Massachusetts on the Right to Petition, as Connected With Petitions For the Abolition of Slavery and The Slave Trade in the District of Columbia; In the House of Representatives, January 25, 1836 (20,474K - Note: This is a rather large file and it may take a while to download depending on your connection speed.) Washington: Gales and Seaton, 1836. Cushing addresses the House not on the issue of slavery but on the fundamental right to petition that has been curtailed. He states, "I can no longer consent that these my constituents shall be held waiting as it were, at the doors of the Capitol for admission, when, as I read the Constitution, they have a right to immediate entrance, and to be respectfully received by their assembled representatives."
- Petition of Citizens of Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, For an Annual Appropriation to Remove to Africa All Free Negroes and Manumitted Slaves, Etc., February 9, 1836. Laid on the Table and Ordered To Be Printed (2,781K - Note: This is a rather large file and it may take a while to download depending on your connection speed.) In accordance with the rules established by the House of Representatives that prohibited members from printing, discussing or even mentioning the contents of anti-slavery petitions, but allowed the petitions to be "laid on the table" only, this petition was laid on the table. It proposes "the removal of the free Negroes in this country from among the white population... as a matter in which the safety, harmony, and good order of society, materially depend."
- Additional Documents on Slavery
- Broadside: Anti-Slavery Convention (3,571K - Note: This is a rather large file and it may take a while to download depending on your connection speed.) Notice for Connecticut citizens to attend a Convention to be held in Hartford on the last Wednesday of April, 1837, in order to form a State Anti-Slavery Society.
- Broadside: $2,500 REWARD (422K). Notice from a slaveholder in Mississippi county, Mo. For a reward to be given for the capture of a Negro Man Named George, A Negro Man Slave Named Noah, A Negro Man Named Hamp and a Negro Slave Named Bob.
- Letter: (163K) from Frederick Douglass to S. W. Cowles, Esq. On August 21, 1882, in response to Mr. Cowles' request for a pair of slave shackles, Douglass writes, "I would send you a pair of handcuffs or slave shackles if I had them. I think you would be more likely to find such articles among former slaveholders than among former slaves. I have been better known for getting rid, than getting possession of such emblems of our Civilization and Christianity."
- Travel Journal: South-Side View of Slavery: Three Months at the South in 1854 (42,881K - Note: This is a rather large file and it may take a while to download depending on your connection speed.) By Nehemiah Adams, D.D. Boston: T.R. Marvin and B.B. Mussey & Co. 1854. Chapters 1 - 4. Adams undertakes a trip South for his health and relates, "the impressions and expectations with which I went south; the manner in which things appeared to me in connection with slavery in Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia; the correction or confirmation of my northern opinions and feelings; the conclusions to which I was led..."
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