“At last it occurred to me that what I had lost was a country.”
THOREAU
Then
I recently reread “Slavery in Massachusetts,” the angriest essay that Henry David Thoreau ever wrote, and now I can’t get it out of my head. A fugitive slave had been captured in Boston and, despite abolitionist resistance, shipped back to his enslaver in Virginia. Everything about the case enraged Thoreau. He was angry that federal troops had occupied the city, angry that the governor allowed the president to seize control of the state militia. He was angry that no one enforced state laws giving fugitives their civil rights, and angry at state officials who obeyed the laws of slavery and ignored one of their own that commanded resistance. In the face of a government dominated by slave-holding states, Massachusetts should have defended its sovereignty, even if blood should flow and the Union itself be dissolved. “My thoughts are murder to the State.”