In 1850 Douglas moved to Chicago, which had become the chief city of the State.
The people were greatly exasperated by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. The City Council, on October 21st, passed resolutions harshly condemning the Senators and Representatives from the free States who had supported it and "those who basely sneaked away from their seats and thereby evaded the question," classing them with Benedict Arnold and Judas Iscariot. This was a personal challenge to Douglas. It happened that he was absent from the Senate on private business when the bill was passed. But the charge of evading the question was grossly unjust.
On the evening of the 22nd a mass meeting was held at the city hall, attended by a great concourse of angry citizens, who, amid tumultuous applause, resolved to defy "death, the dungeon and the grave" in resisting the hated law. Douglas appeared on the platform and announced that on the following evening he would address the people in defense of the Fugitive Slave Law and the entire Compromise.
The announcement was received with a storm of hisses and groans.
The next night an enormous multitude gathered to hear him. The audience was not only sullen but bitterly hostile. After a contemptuous reference to the resolutions and a brief vindication of himself against their insinuations, he plunged into the defense of the law. He insisted that the provision for the return of fugitive slaves contained in the recent act was analogous to the general provision of law for the return of fugitives from justice, and, while abuses of the process might occur and wrong occasionally inflicted, that was one of the inherent infirmities of human law, and the same objection could be urged with equal force to all extradition statutes. While free blacks might be seized in the North and carried South on the false charge of being fugitives from service, innocent white men might also be seized in Chicago and carried to California on the false charge of being fugitives from justice.
He reminded them that the law of 1850 was substantially a reenactment of that of 1793, passed by the Revolutionary Fathers, the founders of the Constitution, and approved by President Washington. He did not argue, but assumed the justice of the old law; nor did he allude to the increased ardor of pursuit of fleeing slaves since their increase in value. He rested his case on the close resemblance of the letter of the new law to that of the old. He told them that the duty of returning fugitive slaves was created not by THIS law, but by the Constitution, and that the real question was not as to the existence of the duty, but which law performed it most justly and efficiently.
A listener asked him whether the Constitution was not in violation of the will of God. He warned them of the danger of that objection, arising from the difficulty of authentically ascertaining the will of God. It was not practicable to allow each citizen to determine it for himself. Hence, certain fundamental principles had been established as a Constitution, which must be assumed to be in harmony with it and from which no appeal lay. The Constitution provided for the return of fugitive slaves. The sacred duty of citizenship bound them to support it. Appeals to a higher law were impracticable and a mere evasion of duty.
Read in a the calmer light of after years the effectiveness of this speech is hard to understand. The literal difference between the recent act and the law of 1793, was not great. But the difference between the ethical views of slavery held by the people in 1850and those held in 1793 was not to be measured. The changes in the law were vicious and in the opposite direction from the radical changes in popular sentiment. The specially odious provision of the new law, distinguishing it from general extradition statutes, was that forbidding resort to the writ of habeas corpus by the alleged fugitive at the place where seized. The fugitive from justice in California seized in Chicago could, on writ of habeas corpus issued by an Illinois court, have it judicially determined before his deportation whether the facts charged against him constituted a crime and whether thee was probable cause to believe that he had committed it.
Under the new law the Federal Commissioner of the State where the arrest was made had no power to inquire into the truth or sufficiency of the charge. He could only determine whether the person arrested was probably the one who had committed the escape, and must decline to hear the testimony of the fugitive himself. The fact of escape was judicially determined in advance, ex parte, in the State from which it had been made, and the alleged fugitive was remanded to that State for such further proceedings as its laws might provide and "no process issued by any Court, Judge, Magistrate or other person whomsoever" could molest the captor in bearing away his prize.
The speech was adroit, clever and marvelously effective. It strikingly illustrates the mental habits of the times. It sought to stem an irresistible moral current with ingenious plausibilities and appeals to precedent. It treated the question as one of political expediency. It sounded no moral depths, discussed no ethical problem, though the country was aflame with moral indignation and rising passionately against the ethics of the past. It mastered the audience by its fidelity to literal truth and sent them home dazed, troubled, doubtful and ashamed. At the close of the speech resolutions affirming the duty of Congress to pass the Fugitive Slave Law and that of citizens to obey and support it, and repudiating those of the Common Council, were presented and unanimously adopted by the subdued and humbled crowd. On the following night the Council repealed their offensive resolutions.
