A Letter to the Hon. Samuel A. Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill.

A pointed public letter rebukes a congressman’s justification for supporting the Fugitive Slave Law, arguing that alleged constitutional obligation cannot excuse statutes that affront conscience and liberty. The author dissects the apology with legal and historical analysis, challenging assertions about which states had abolished slavery and the origins of the constitutional clause. The correspondence traces how constitutional language was framed and contests the claim that its terms compelled the law’s harsher provisions. It condemns those provisions as arbitrary and dangerous, emphasizes moral and human-rights objections, and urges evaluation of the statute by its effects rather than by asserted procedural duty.