The movement to make a place like New Bedford a Sanctuary City has been relying on having the city council enact an ordinance to that effect.
However, since from its founding by Quakers and then throughout most of the 19th Century the city of New Bedford was influenced by the beliefs and attitudes of that particular sect and unconsciously many of its beliefs have become embedded in the spirit of the city, I thought an alternate approach would be to research if in the 19th century, in the days before the abolition of slavery, the city of New Bedford had any law on the books supporting aid to fugitive slaves, or, as the practice was wide spread, any ordinance to stop it.
Before it was enacted, there was some wiggle room in New Bedford when it came to fugitive slaves, but with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law that was lost. You were expected by Washington to either obey the federal law, or ignore it at your legal peril.
Or perhaps not.
Most galling about the passage of the law was the hypocrisy that while slaves were not people, when it came to determining representation in the House of Representatives, each slave was counted as 3/5 of a human and slaves were then counted accordingly in the population. In the North chattel was chattel 100% of the time. A cow was always a cow. But in the South, certain chattel were chattel when it was advantageous to be, but became people when that was advantageous.
As a result, the South always had a representational advantage in Washington, and passage of the Fugitive Slave Law was easy.
Prior to the law’s passage, New Bedford was one of the terminal cities of the Underground Rail Road, and it is estimated that prior to its passage there were about 400 fugitive slaves living in the city that had a total Black population of just over 1,000.
Many of the fugitive slaves were at one point housed in the homes of prominent citizens like Thomas Arnold and William Rotch.
By 1840, there was only on average two men of color on each whaling voyage, which meant the majority of the city’s black population worked where they lived on land and saw no need to further escape to the sea.
When the Fugitive Slave Law passed, many escaping slaves only used New Bedford as a stopping off point until passage to the towns established in Canada by escaped slaves could be arranged. And since any Black person could have been rounded up by Southern bounty hunters, those who did not feel safe also moved further north.
I found that during the time fugitive slaves were in New Bedford, even though their protection was an unlawful act there was no formal ordinance one way or the other that established a formal ignoring of the federal law, nor any ordinance against those who ignored it.
Therefore, it is browse here viagra effects women extremely essential to assure that their driver education course is certifiable and sanctioned by the authorities. The physical and mental dilemma of this can be reflected in causing you trouble through the burning sensations surrounding the chest and throat areas just after taking the diets. viagra pill Then find out what the ingredients are of such supplements and find out what they can really do for you. pfizer viagra tablets Other key ingredients such as Akarkra, Gold Patra, Kesar, Khakhastil, Akarkara, Dalchini, Salabmisri, Samudra Sosh, Jaiphal etc. buy cheap cialis Continue Shopping The people’s treatment of the fugitive slaves was obviously based on a firmly held religious belief of the equality of man and the universal citizenship in the world, so to tell a city like New Bedford that it should not remain a sanctuary city is to trample on the religious freedom of its citizens by suppressing or ignoring the city’s firmly held religious belief of equality.
Religious freedom means more than endorsing candidates from the pulpit and allowing people to discriminate against the GLBT community, women, and members of other, non-majority religions in spite of laws making discrimination illegal. It also should include people’s beliefs in how refugees should be treated. Otherwise, laws on religious freedom show themselves to be the political, non-religious tools they are.
It is my strongly held religious belief, and that of many others, that all men are created equal and that borders are man-made constructs whose purpose is only for temporal political control and that laws to support those borders are only to ensure those in power maintain it.
The United Nations 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees defines a refugee as
“A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.”
Many of those who have come to this city as undocumented people qualify as refugees under this definition.
Historically, the welcoming and protecting of refugees has been a strongly held religious belief of a city whose Quaker past and ideals run through its veins.
The city of New Bedford has always been a Sanctuary City, and to force it to be anything else is to deny it the right to act on its firmly held religious beliefs.
This denial would go against the convictions of the very people who oppose Sanctuary cities, the people who vehemently defend religious freedom. You cannot claim to be the champion of religious freedom when actively denying it to someone else.
The effort should be to maintain city tradition and the respecting of the city’s firmly held religious belief and not be distracted by the effort and energy involved in attempting to establish what already exists.
Rather than enact, the city must re-affirm.
Force those who wish to deny the city’s history to attempt to take the public action of erasing it.