THE IRON AGE.
The resolute and determined purpose of the Southerners to make the
institution of slavery national, and the equally powerful growing
public sentiment at the North to make freedom universal, showed plainly
that the nation was fast approaching a crisis on this absorbing
question. In Congress, men were compelled to take either the one or
the other side, and the debates became more fiery, as the subject
progressed.
John P. Hale led in the Senate, while Joshua R. Giddings was the
acknowledged leader in the House of Representatives in behalf of
freedom. On the part of slavery, the leadership in the Senate lay
between Foot of Mississippi, and McDuffie of South Carolina; while
Henry A. Wise, followed by a ravenous pack watched over the interest of
the “peculiar institution” in the House.
The early adoption of the famous “Gag Law,” whereby all petitions on
the subject of slavery were to be “tabled” without discussion, instead
of helping the Southern cause, brought its abettors into contempt. In
the House, Mr. Giddings was censured for offering resolutions in regard
to the capture of the brig Creole.
Mr. Giddings resigned, went home, was at once re-elected, and returned
to Congress to renew the contest. An attempt to expel John Quincy
Adams, for presenting a petition from a number of persons held in
slavery, was a failure, and from which the friends of the negro took
fresh courage.
In the South, the Legislatures were enacting laws abridging the
freedom of speech and of the press, and making it more difficult for
Northerners to travel in the slave states. Rev. Charles T. Torry was
in the Maryland Penitentiary for aiding slaves to escape, and Jonathan
Walker had been branded with a red-hot iron, and sent home for the same
offence. The free colored people of the South were being persecuted in
a manner hitherto unknown in that section. Amid all these scenes, there
was a moral contest going on at the North. The Garrison abolitionists,
whose head-quarters were in Boston, were at work with a zeal which has
scarcely ever been equalled by any association of men and women.
“The Liberator,” Mr. Garrison’s own paper, led the vanguard; while the
“National Anti-slavery Standard,” edited at times by Oliver Johnson,
Lydia Maria Child, David Lee Child, and Sydney Howard Gay, gave no
uncertain sound on the slavery question.
The ladies connected with this society, headed by Maria Weston Chapman,
held an annual fair, and raised funds for the prosecution of the work
of changing public sentiment, and otherwise aiding the anti-slavery
movement. Lecturing agents were kept in the field the year round, or
as far as their means would permit. A few clergymen had already taken
ground against the blood-stained sin, and were singled out by both
pulpit and press, as marks for their poisoned arrows. The ablest and
most ultra of these, was Theodore Parker, the singularly gifted and
truly eloquent preacher of the 28th Congregational Society of Boston.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, though younger and later in the cause,
was equally true, and was amongst the first to invite anti-slavery
lecturers to his pulpit. The writer of this, a negro, at his invitation
occupied his desk at Newburyport, when it cost something to be an
abolitionist.
Brave men of other denominations, in different sections of the country,
were fast taking their stand with the friends of the slave.
The battle in Congress was raging hotter and hotter. The Florida war,
the admission of Texas, and the war against Mexico, had given the
slaveholders a bold front, and they wielded the political lash without
the least mercy or discretion upon all who offended them. Greater
protection for slave property in the free states was demanded by those
who saw their human chattels escaping.
The law of 1793, for the recapture of fugitive slaves, was now
insufficient for the great change in public opinion, and another
code was asked for by the South. On the 18th of September, 1850, the
Fugitive Slave Bill was passed, and became the law of the land.
This was justly condemned by good men of all countries, as the most
atrocious enactment ever passed by any legislative body. The four
hundred thousand free colored residents in the non slave-holding
states, were liable at any time to be seized under this law and
carried into servitude.
Intense excitement was created in every section of the free states
where any considerable number of colored persons resided. In
Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio, where there were many fugitives
and descendants of former slaves, the feeling rose to fever-heat.
Every railroad leading toward Canada was thronged with blacks fleeing
for safety. In one town in the State of New York, every member of a
Methodist Church, eighty-two in number, including the pastor, fled to
Canada.
The passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill was a sad event to the colored
citizens of this State. At that time there were eight thousand nine
hundred and seventy-five persons of color in Massachusetts. In
thirty-six hours after the passage of the bill was known here, five and
thirty colored persons applied to a well-known philanthropist in this
city for counsel. Before sixty hours passed by, more than forty had
fled. The laws of Massachusetts could not be trusted to shelter her own
children; they must flee to Canada.[52]
Numbers of these fugitives had escaped many years before, had married
free partners, had acquired property, and had comfortable homes; these
were broken up and their members scattered. Soon after the law went
into force, the kidnappers made their appearance in Boston.
The fact that men-stealers were prowling about the streets, through
which, eighty years before, the enemies of liberty had been chased,
caused no little sensation amongst all classes, and when it was
understood that William Craft and his beautiful quadroon wife were
the intended victims, the excitement increased fearfully. These two
persons had escaped from Macon, in the State of Georgia, a year and a
half before. The man was of unmixed negro, the woman, nearly white.
Their mode of escape was novel. The wife, attired as a gentleman,
attended by her husband as a slave, took the train for the North, and
arrived in Philadelphia, after a journey of two days; part of which
was made on steamboats. The writer was in the Quaker City at the time
of their arrival, and was among the first to greet them. Many exciting
incidents occurred during the passage to the land of freedom, which
gave considerable notoriety to the particular case of the Crafts, and
the slave-catchers were soon marked men.
After many fruitless attempts to have the fugitives arrested, Hughs and
his companions returned to the South; while Craft and his wife fled to
England.
Boston was not alone in her commotion; Daniel had been arrested at
Buffalo, and taken before Henry K. Smith, a drunken commissioner, and
remanded to his claimant; Hamlet was captured by the kidnappers in
New York City, and Jerry was making his name famous by his arrest at
Syracuse, in the same state.
The telegrams announcing these events filled the hearts of the blacks
with sad emotions, and told the slave-holders that the law could be
executed. News soon came from Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and other
states, of the arrest and rendition of persons claimed as slaves, many
of whom were proven to be free-born. Boston was not permitted to remain
long ere she again witnessed the reappearance of the negro-catcher.
A colored man named Shadrach was claimed as a slave; he was arrested,
put in prison, and the kidnappers felt that for once they had a sure
thing. Boston, however, was a strange place for a human being to be
in a dungeon for wanting to be free; and Shadrach was spirited away
to Canada, no one knew how. The men of Boston who traded largely with
the South, felt that their city was in disgrace in not being able to
execute the Fugitive Slave Bill, and many of them wished heartily for
another opportunity.
So, on the night of the third of April, 1851, Thomas Simms was
arrested, and after a trial which became historical, was sent back into
slavery, to the utter disgrace of all concerned in his return.
Next came the rendition of Anthony Burns, a Baptist clergyman, who
was arrested at the instance of Charles F. Suttle, of Virginia. The
commissioner before whom the case was tried was Ellis Greely Loring.
This trial excited even more commotion than did the return of Simms. A
preacher in fetters because he wanted to be free was a new thing to the
people of Boston.
During the progress of the hearing, the feeling extended to the country
towns, and nearly every train coming in brought large numbers of
persons anxious to behold the new order of things. To guard against the
possibility of a rescue, the building in which the commissioner did his
work was in chains. Burns was delivered to Suttle, and the Union was
once more safe.
The Boston Court House in chains, two hundred rowdies and thieves sworn
in as special policemen, respectable citizens shoved off the sidewalks
by these slave-catchers, all for the purpose of satisfying “our
brethren of the South.”
But this act did not appease the feelings or satisfy the demands of the
slave-holders, while it still further inflamed the fire of abolitionism.
The “Dred Scott Decision” added fresh combustibles to the smouldering
heap. Dred Scott, a slave, taken by his master into free Illinois, and
then beyond the line of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes, and then
back into Missouri, sued for and obtained his freedom, on the ground
that having been taken where, by the Constitution, slavery was illegal,
his master lost all claim.
But the Supreme Court, on appeal, reversed the judgment, and Dred
Scott, with his wife and children, was taken back into slavery.
FOOTNOTE:
[52] “Rendition of Thomas Simms.” Theodore Parker, p. 20, 1852.