Alexandria Gazette

Letter from the Hon. Richard Rush

In answer to an invitation to take part in a Democratic mass meeting at East Smithfield, Pa., a short time previous to the late election in that State, the Hon. Richard Rush wrote a reply, of which the following is an extract.—

It is of historical interest, besides expressing the views of a distinguished statesman on one of the topics now prominent before the country:

SYDENHAM. (near Philadelphia,)
September 23, 1851.

The little I desire to say, will be on the Fugitive Slave law.

Since the formation of the Constitution of the United States there has never been, as far as I at present remember, any insurrection of any nature whatever to overturn or resist by violence the laws passed in pursuance of it, in any one State of the whole Union, except this; and we have had three.

First we had the "western insurrection," as it was emphatically called, in 1794. It was a very formidable one. It pervaded nearly all the western counties of our State. General Washington, then at the head of the Government, did all that he could at first, or that mortal wisdom could, to suppress it by conciliatory means; but finally it had to be put down by military force. Fifteen thousand men were called into the field, made up by requisitions from the militia of Virginia, Maryland, and New Jersey, as well as this State. This great force overawed further resistance to the laws. Criminal prosecutions and convictions for treason followed. The President pardoned the convicts.

The second insurrection was in 1799, chiefly in Northampton county. On that occasion all attempts to execute civil process for forcible resistance to certain laws of the United States proving abortive, the militia and volunteers from the neighboring counties were called upon to march to the scene of disorder. Through their instrumentality, in co-operation with the judicial power, submission to the laws was restored. Criminal prosecutions followed, as in the former case, against those who resisted them by violence, and convictions were had for treason. But here, also, the pardoning power of the president—the elder Adams—was interposed, and the scaffold not erected.

The third occasion on which we arrayed ourselves against the authority of the Union was in the Olmsted case. That strife brought us towards the brink of civil war, and at one moment not very far from it. When the marshal first attempted to execute the process of the Courts of the United States, in that case, he was resisted at the point of the bayonet.— This was in Philadelphia. Finally, the process was executed, not openly, but by secret skill or some humane stratagem, and the spilling of blood happily avoided. Here again legal convictions for the offences took place, but punishment was remitted by President Madison.

I do but recall facts. I intend no comments on them. History has written them down, and we cannot obliterate them. A Pennsylvanian myself, I desire to cherish a just pride in my native State. I am gratefully sensible of having had the honor of sharing in her counsels and confidence heretofore, and am proud of the long and high merits in her history to counterbalance the occurrences I recall. But just in proportion as I ardently cling to such feelings, do I desire to give expression at this juncture to an inten anxiety that she may be found to acquit herself well in all respects in executing the Fugitive Slave Law. She ought not again to swerve from her fealty to the Union when professing that feeling; but avoid every appearance of it. She ought to rally around the Fugitive Slave law in the spirit evinced at the vast Union meeting in Philadelphia in November last, when whole thousands of our Whig friends, though political opponents, enthusiastically cheered, with the devotion of patriots, and a wisdom above all party, the resolution for its full and hearty execution—not in its words only, but in its great import and transcendant national objects.

I am compelled, however, for one, to say—indeed truth and frankness might well force it upon most of us to say—that our present attitude in regard to that paramount law is very extraordinary. It is worse than that of any one of the States composing this wide Confederacy. That law is more vital to the preservation of the Federal Constitution than any of the laws of Congress, or all of them put together, the opposition to which produced the insurrections I have mentioned. This is my sincere belief. Yet already have we seen it resisted, and resisted to blood, in this State—not only once, but twice. There is no other State in which it has been resisted to extremities so deplorable. Is not this enough to startle Pennsylvanians—to make them look around—to ask themselves how it has come about, and, above all, what is the remedy? Before we give way to any excess of State pride, as thinking ourselves a main prop of the Union, we ought to think of the posture we are now placed in presence of our sister States.— First came the murder of young Kennedy, of Maryland, at Carlisle: next the brutal killing and mangling of Mr. Gorsuch, another citizen of Maryland, his son, and others who accompanied him across our line to aid him in obtaining his rights, also falling, as supposed at first, under mortal wounds and gashes. All this happening in one of the oldest and most populous counties of the State, amidst frantic yells and howlings, characteristic of savages!— Alas for our good old Commonwealth, if no stop is put to such deeds. Instead of being the Keystone, we shall become the destroying power of this mighty and glorious Union. It is remarkable that in neither of the insurrections above mentioned, with the Olmsted case added to them, was there as much blood shed as already there has been in Pennsylvania by forcible resistance to the Fugitive Slave law.— Our annals in 1851 will thus take priority in blood-guiltness in opposing the statutes of the Union.