S. HOPKINS¹S. Hopkins does not appear in the census or city directories for Lockport, New York, in the 1850s. TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Lockport, [N.Y.] 21 Aug[ust] 1851.

FRIEND DOUGLASS:—

Yours of yesterday received²Douglass’s prior letter to Hopkins has not been located. and noted. I have sometimes thought of stopping one or more of the papers sent me, for I take several. I have thought I could part with yours, but it is worse than parting with a friend. It must not be. Your paper is one of the battle-ships of humanity. It must not go down. Her leader must not falter. In our midst, a few hour’s ride from our doors, men engaged in taking care of themselves by honest labor are knocked down and rendered insensible, and in which state they are loaded with irons, taken before what is called a court, not for trial for an offense against the well-being of society, but to await the examination of certain papers and witnesses by which it is ascertained that the being, although having the God-given form of man, is only a thing to be bought and sold as brutes are. Brutes are not tried in law. This thing (for what also do they make him) is not tried. He is dumb, (so should all humanity be.) Friends are not allowed to call testimony to show that this is not the thing they take him to be.—The question of perpetual bondage, in my mind greater than that of life and death, is decided with more haste than would be a case of petit larceny.

I could not believe men could be found in Western New York mean enough to catch men who were not charged with crime, but with the noble work of making themselves freemen. Our fathers fought for their freedom and we honor them. Our public men are often from low degree, and we call them self-made; we point to them as examples for the young, we honor them. But here is one who has come up from the low estate of a chattel, from among swine he has raised himself up and declared himself a man—one whom God has made such—none who has made himself a freeman, and we catch him. A nation is summoned to the chase. Our most noted men are taking the lead. Prayers are offered for the success of the cause³In his writings, the Reverend Samuel J. May described the heated dispute among fellow upstate New York clergy over the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Most abolitionists and many moderate antislavery ministers called for resistance to that legislation as obedience to a “Higher Law.” Conservative clergy responded that all laws of the land must be obeyed until changed by the weight of public disapproval. A few even described Paul’s epistle to Philemon as an inspired commandment to obey the Fugitive Slave Law. Samuel J. May, Recollections of Our Anti-Slavery Conflict (Boston, 1869), 366–67; McKivigan, War against Proslavery Religion, 153–54, 172–73; Stange, Patterns of Antislavery, 137–41, 209–17.—[p]rayers to Him who sent his son into the world that all men might be free.⁴John 3:17, adapted.—Thus christians, professing christians, join in the chase. What mockery! The South has been charged with being the slaveholders, now all may see, none deny, that the North are equally culpable, and even doing a meaner work, that of pandering to southern vices.

You may continue my paper and oblige Yours for humanity,

S. HOPKINS.