Page:The Under-Ground Railroad.djvu/58

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the Slaveholders; they are not permitted to be anything else if they obey the Fugitive Bill, and, I am sorry to say, many do. I say, they are Slave-catchers for the South, as the following will shew, which occurred in 1852.

James Phillips, a coloured man, who had lived 14 years in Harrisburgh, Pennsylvania, much respected, and employed in a confidential situation on a railway, while on duty, he was thrown off his guard, knocked down, and then taken before Commissioner Richard McAllister, and, in a summary manner, and by an irregular process, was delivered up into Slavery. I ask, in the name of humanity, who did this atrocious and abominable act?—a Northern Commissioner,—who holds his office by the will and consent of the people. The character of the Fugitive, entitling him to the confidence of the people, they bought him. After he had been given up by the Commissioner Burns, he was taken back from Boston, the hot-bed of Abolitionism; the North gave him up. The North supports Slavery, both in Church and State. But for the under-ground rail-road, very few Slaves would be able to reach Canada. Coming, as they are compelled, through the Northern States, among as rank a set of Slaveholders as are to be found in South Carolina: men in the Northern States who own Slaves in the South; merchants in New York, Boston, Phila-