Feet of clay–a fundamental flaw or weakness in a person otherwise revered. We’ve been programmed to overlook the flaws in certain males because of their public works. The good outweighs the bad. I don’t think so. I recently read Frederick Douglass’s 4th of July speech known as “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July“. I listened to the excerpt read by James Earl Jones and then I read the entire speech. As you know, I am not a fan of the way Douglass treated his wife, Anna. That, to me, is his feet of clay.
Douglass’s 1852 speech led me to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
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The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which penalized officials who did not arrest someone allegedly escaping from slavery, and made them liable to a fine of $1,000 (equivalent to $37,800 in 2024). Law enforcement officials everywhere were required to arrest people suspected of escaping enslavement on as little as a claimant’s sworn testimony of ownership. Habeas corpus (a writ requiring a person under arrest to be brought before a judge or into court, especially to secure the person’s release unless lawful grounds are shown for their detention) was declared irrelevant. The Commissioner before whom the fugitive from slavery was brought for a hearing—no jury was permitted, and the alleged refugee from enslavement could not testify—was compensated $10 (equivalent to $380 in 2024) if he found that the individual was proven a fugitive and only $5 (equivalent to $190 in 2024) if he determined the proof to be insufficient. In addition, any person aiding a fugitive by providing food or shelter was subject to up to six months of imprisonment and up to $1,000 in fine. Officers who captured a fugitive from slavery were entitled to a bonus or promotion for their work. Enslavers needed only to supply an affidavit to a Federal marshal to capture a fugitive from slavery. Since a suspected enslaved person was not eligible for a trial, the law resulted in the kidnapping and conscription of free Blacks into slavery, as purported fugitive slaves had no rights in court and could not defend themselves against accusations. Poster and paragraph (emphasis and parenthetical re: habeas corpus added) excerpted from–https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1850
What’s happening in 2025 is the same playbook enacted in the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850. The executive order that started it is the Federal version and some States are now enacting their version.
This excerpt from an email I received–A dangerous new law just went into effect in Tennessee—one that criminalizes churches, non-profits, landlords, and neighbors who offer shelter and services to undocumented people. Tennessee Senate Bill 392 is the bill referenced in the email and below is its codification:
T.C.A. 39-17-119.
(a) It is an offense for a person to harbor or hide, or to assist another in
harboring or hiding, within this state an individual who the person knows or should have
known has illegally entered or remained in the United States, as determined by the bureau of immigration and customs enforcement of the United States department of homeland security.
(b) A violation of this section is a Class A misdemeanor, punishable only by a
fine of one thousand dollars ($1,000) for each person harbored or hidden.
SECTION 8. This act takes effect July 1, 2025, the public welfare requiring it, and applies to any offense committed on or after that date.
This is an example of the 2025 version of the Fugitive Slave Act and this is the playbook of the masked ICE bounty hunters. The Fugitive Slave Act sanctioned the terrorizing of Black people and its guiding principles have been resurrected to terrorize immigrants.
This is what Frederick Douglass had to say about the Fugitive Slave Act and it rings as true today as it did in 1852–By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. By that act, Mason & Dixon’s line has been obliterated; New York has become as Virginia; and the power to hold, hunt, and sell men, women, and children as slaves remains no longer a mere state institution, but is now an institution of the whole United States. The power is co-extensive with the star
spangled banner and American Christianity. Where these go, may also go
the merciless slave-hunter. Where these are, man is not sacred. He is a bird
for the Sportsman’s gun. By that most foul and fiendish of all human
decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. Your broad
republican domain is hunting ground for men. Not for thieves and robbers,
enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. Your law
makers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport.
Your President, your Secretary of State, your lords, nobles, and ecclesias
tics, enforce, as a duty you owe to your free and glorious country, and to
your God, that you do this accursed thing. Not fewer than forty Americans
have, within the past two years, been hunted down and, without a
moment’s warning, hurried away in chains, and consigned to slavery and
excruciating torture. Some of these have had wives and children, depen
dent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. The right of the
hunter to his prey stands superior to the right of marriage, and to all rights
in this republic, the rights of God included! For black men there are neither
law, justice, humanity, nor religion. The Fugitive Slave Law makes MERCY
TO THEM, A CRIME; and bribes the judge who tries them. An American
JUDGE GETS TEN DOLLARS FOR EVERY VICTIM HE CONSIGNS to slavery, and
five, when he fails to do so. The oath of any two villains is sufficient, under
this hell-black enactment, to send the most pious and exemplary black man
into the remorseless jaws of slavery! His own testimony is nothing. He can
bring no witnesses for himself. The minister of American justice is bound
by the law to hear but one side; and that side, is the side of the oppressor.
Let this damning fact be perpetually told. Let it be thundered around the
world, that, in tyrant-killing, king-hating, people-loving, democratic,
Christian America, the seats of justice are filled with judges, who hold their
offices under an open and palpable bribe, and are bound, in deciding in the
case of a man’s liberty, to hear only his accusers!
In glaring violation of justice, in shameless disregard of the forms of
administering law, in cunning arrangement to entrap the defenceless, and
in diabolical intent, this Fugitive Slave Law stands alone in the annals of
tyrannical legislation.
Not too much of a leap to see the similarities between the 1850 law and the policies of today in 2025. In at least one way, 2025 is worse. In 2025, there isn’t even the pretense of judicial review before a person is grabbed and gone. Not even in front of a judge whose greed would, in all probability, overrule the facts. It is unfortunate and a continued stain on these United States that the Fugitive Slave Act in this year 2025 does not stand alone in the annals of tyrannical legislation.
The United States wasn’t great in the 1850s and it is not great today. The inhumane shortsightedness of the 1850s (and before) led to the Civil War. In 1850, the rule of the southern minority was the law of the land. Now, another minority is ruling. Rule by the minority did not go well in the long run. Do we have to endure another long run before this minority is thrust into history as the stain, the blight that it is?
My Ancestors who fought in the Civil War (silhouette of Civil War soldier pictured above) and WWII would not be appalled or surprised at what is happening now because of the times they lived in. They had no expectation of justice, fair play, equality from whites. I do think they would be disappointed. They put their lives on the line for a country that has renounced their existence, then and now, but they believed their service would benefit their descendants. We have found that white people don’t see any benefit in being a better human being. Their greed is too all consuming.
I have to agree with Douglass that the 4th of July may as well be a day of mourning for us, especially now. Devolution, greed, cruelty, broken promises, plundered rights–I’m not a masochist or a sadist. Maybe, they would celebrate. The proverbial dancing on the grave of one’s last best hope for survival.
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Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of
ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate
the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties
They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry
waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, how
ever, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely
as ever. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up,
and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to
howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. As with
rivers so with nations.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is
needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would,
to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, wither
ing sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is
not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and
the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the con
science of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be
startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against
God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
Excerpts from Frederick Douglass’s Fourth of July Speech (1852)
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