Brother Douglass:—
I s[aw] at the commencement of the trial of Lawyer Morris, in Boston, one of those implicated in the rescue of Shadrach last February. The United States Circuit Court suffered the prosecuting attorney to pack a jury who was willing to engage, (in substance, to regard the fugitive slave law binding on their consciences, unless directed by the Court to the contrary! Was there any transaction by the colonial tory tribunals, on the eve of the Revolution, to exceed this in tyranny? And will the descendants of those who indignantly resisted the Boston port bill, and even refused payment of an unrighteous revenue tax, now be the foremost to trample in the dust every sacred right on which a Warren, an Adams, and a Franklin, gloriously stood? Forbid it Heaven! I have not learned the result of the trial. But it appears to me morally impossible that the descendants of those sires, in sight of Bunker's hill monument, should so desecrate the constitution as to make it justify the distinction of rights for the protection of which their fathers framed it, and in the name of this sacred instrument, close the doors of mercy previously open through the common law, and the law of God. But where is this usurpation of our Federal Judges to end? Suppose the Christiana rescuers are tried by a jury, picked to carry out the decision of Judge Kane already expressed, and twelve men be found destitute of the fear of God before their eyes, or the love of God and man in their hearts; will Pennsylvania suffer seventy of her citizens to be strung up by the neck, for obeying the laws of God and humanity, and the Declaration of our Independence and Federal Constitution, as they understand them?—his honor, Kane, to the contrary not withstanding. If she should, then should she not desecrate the name of Penn, but be called Nero, and her Philadelphia be called Herod! But should she assert the inalienable rights of her citizens, and resist the encroachments of Federal usurpation, what may we expect next from the slave power?—Anything, however unconstitutional and despotic to crush the opposition to slavery.—Perhaps an enactment making it a capital offense for an individual to declare the fugitive slave law unconstitutional! And rebellion for a State to declare the same by her Legislature or Judiciary.
But I must forbear! If "oppression maketh a wise man mad," the contemplation of American oppression, goaded on by the slave power, rum power, and office power, taking the name of "law and order," trampling down the constitution, common law, and God's law, may make a man of my feeble intellect forget to turn the other cheek.
Wm. ShattuckShattuck, William

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Randolph, Nov. 14th, 1851.