[33]
Advocates of the severer punishment dwelt on the enormity of the
offence. It was "one of the highest crimes man could commit," and "a
captain of a ship engaged in this traffic was guilty of murder."[34] The
law of God punished the crime with death, and any one would rather be
hanged than be enslaved.[35] It was a peculiarly deliberate crime, in
which the offender did not act in sudden passion, but had ample time for
reflection.[36] Then, too, crimes of much less magnitude are punished
with death. Shall we punish the stealer of $50 with death, and the
man-stealer with imprisonment only?[37] Piracy, forgery, and fraudulent
sinking of vessels are punishable with death, "yet these are crimes only
against property; whereas the importation of slaves, a crime committed
against the liberty of man, and inferior only to murder or treason, is
accounted nothing but a misdemeanor."[38] Here, indeed, lies the remedy
for the evil of freeing illegally imported Negroes,--in making the
penalty so severe that none will be brought in; if the South is sincere,
"they will unite to a man to execute the law."[39] To free such Negroes
is dangerous; to enslave them, wrong; to return them, impracticable; to
indenture them, difficult,--therefore, by a death penalty, keep them
from being imported.[40] Here the East had a chance to throw back the
taunts of the South, by urging the South to unite with them in hanging
the New England slave-traders, assuring the South that "so far from
charging their Southern brethren with cruelty or severity in hanging
them, they would acknowledge the favor with gratitude.
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