Duncan held that slavery was "directly contrary to the Federal
Constitution." See pp. 110, 111.
The last member of the trio who complained of delay in granting
freedom to the enslaved was the Rev. John Rankin, the pastor of
a Presbyterian church in the town of Ripley on the Ohio River in
southwestern Ohio. Long residence in Tennessee and Kentucky had
filled him with hatred of slavery, and for this hatred he gave
his reasons in a series of thirteen vigorous letters addressed to
his brother Thomas, a merchant at Middlebrook, Augusta County,
Virginia, who had recently become a slave-owner. The letters were
written in 1824, and were collected in a little volume in 1826. In
the preface, Mr. Rankin said that the safety of the government and
the happiness of its subjects depended upon the extermination of
slavery,[894] and in the letters themselves he attacked the system
of American slavery in unmistakable language. In principle he
stood clearly with Bourne and Duncan, as he afterwards came to the
support of Garrison, although he did not use the words "immediate
abolition." He held that "Avarice tends to enslave, but justice
requires emancipation."[895] He heard with impatience the excuse
for continued slaveholding that freedom would ruin the blacks
because they were not capable of doing for themselves, and must,
therefore, either all starve or steal. With sarcasm he exclaimed,
"Immaculate tenderness! Astonishing sympathy! But what is to be
dreaded more than such tenderness and sympathy? Who would wish to
have them exercised upon himself?... And have not many of those
[slaves] who have been emancipated in America become wealthy and
good citizens?... We are commanded to 'do justly and love mercy,'
and this we ought to do without delay, and leave the consequences
attending it to the control of Him who gave the command."[896] It
has been noted in another place that Mr. Rankin was for years an
active agent of the Underground Railroad, in association with a
number of abolitionists of his neighborhood, among whom he was a
recognized leader.[897]
[894] _Letters on American Slavery_, Preface, p. iii.
[895] _Ibid._, p. 20.
[896] _Letters on American Slavery_, pp. 104, 107.
[897] Chapter IV, p. 109.
[Illustration: REV. JOHN RANKIN.
(From a bust by Ellen Rankin Copp, of Chicago, Illinois.)]
The idea has somehow gained credence in the general accounts of
the anti-slavery movement that the Garrisonian movement was one
that could scarcely be said to have had precursors in the earlier
agitation; and the pre-Garrison abolitionists have been thought
of, apparently, as marked by mild philanthropy, adherence to law
and tolerance. It has been supposed that an interval of inactivity
followed upon the earlier movements, and that the later movement
was thus a thing apart, radically different in its character from
anything that had gone before. In view of the evidence brought
together in this volume it is perhaps not too much to say that a
real continuity of development is traceable through the period with
which we have had to do, and that many little communities throughout
the country, under the influences always at work, had germinated the
idea of immediate abolition, in support of which texts were easily
found in the Bible; and that thus the way had been prepared for the
anti-slavery ideas and activities of 1830 and the subsequent years.
Mr. Garrison himself "confessed his indebtedness for his views" of
slavery to Bourne's _The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable_, next
after the Bible itself,[898] and in Number 17 of the first volume of
the _Liberator_ appears an extract quoted from Bourne's work.[899]
It is certain that Garrison was familiar with the work as early as
September 13, 1830,[900] and he may have been so earlier. He arrived
at the doctrine during the summer of 1829, before his association
with Lundy at Baltimore.[901] It cannot be determined when Garrison
first became acquainted with the _Letters on Slavery_ of the Rev.
John Rankin, but they seem to have had a wide circulation, for about
the year 1825 they had fallen into the hands of the Rev. Samuel J.
May, living at the time in Brooklyn, Connecticut, and he had read
them with interest.[902] In the second volume of the _Liberator_
Garrison republished these letters, and in after years, on more
than one occasion, he acknowledged himself the "disciple" of their
author.[903]
[898] _The Life of Garrison_, by his children, Vol. 1, p. 306.
[899] _Ibid._, postscript to Preface.
[900] _Ibid._, p. 207.
[901] _The Life of Garrison_, Vol. I, p. 140.
[902] _Memoir of S. J. May_, by George B. Emerson and others, pp.
76, 78, 87, 139, 140. See also _Life of Garrison_, Vol. I, p.
213, foot-note.
[903] _Life of Garrison_, Vol. I, pp. 305, 306; Vol. III, pp.
379, 380.
The outspoken courage characteristic of the new phase into which the
anti-slavery cause passed in 1830 helped to increase the resistance
made in the North to the law for the rendition of fugitive slaves.
The sympathy with the slave now became vocal in various centres,
and made itself heard among the blacks of the South through the
passionate and unguarded utterances of their masters. The evidence
gathered from surviving abolitionists in the states adjacent to the
lakes shows an increased activity of the Underground Road during the
decade 1830-1840. The removal of the Indians from the Gulf states
and the consequent opening of vast cotton-fields during the period
named led many slaves to flee from the danger of transportation to
the far South.[904] Under these circumstances pursuits of runaways
became more frequent, and were often marked by a display of anger
on the part of the pursuing party easily accounted for by the
anti-slavery agitation in the free states. Open interference and
rescues in which both negroes and whites took part became more
common.[905] Many persons of respectability, more courageous than
the great majority of their class at that time, not only enrolled
themselves in the new anti-slavery societies, but made it a part
of their duty to engage in the defence of fugitive slaves. Salmon
P. Chase often served as counsel for the captured runaway during
this period, and soon gained for himself the unenvied title of
"attorney-general for fugitive slaves."[906] Other men of talents,
position and education were not behind the rising Ohioan in their
protection of the refugee. A formal organization of Underground
Railroad workers, with Robert Purvis as president, was effected at
Philadelphia in 1838. It is evident that the Underground Railroad
was now developing with rapidity. The conditions prevailing in
the North and South during the decade 1840-1850 were not less
favorable to the escape of slaves, and, in one particular, were more
favorable; the decision in the Prigg case in 1842 took away much of
the effectiveness of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, and thus made
pursuit little less than useless.
[904] G. M. Weston, _Progress of Slavery in the United States_,
p. 22.
[905] McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, pp. 38, 39.
[906] J. W. Schuckers, _The Life and Public Service of Samuel
Portland Chase_, p. 52. For portrait see plate facing p. 254.
About four years before this historic decision was declared, that
is to say, in December, 1838, John Calhoun, of Kentucky, sought to
introduce a resolution in the House looking towards an enactment
making it unlawful for any person to aid fugitive slaves in escaping
from their owners, and another making it unlawful for any person
in the non-slaveholding states to entice slaves from their owners,
the prosecution of offenders against these proposed laws to take
place in the courts of the United States. Objections were made to
the introduction of these resolutions, and Mr. Calhoun was prevented
from getting a reference of the matter to the Committee on the
Judiciary by a vote of 107 to 89.[907] When the Prigg decision
came, its political significance was quickly shown in the passage
of laws by various Northern states forbidding their officers from
performing the duties imposed by the act of 1793. From 1842 to 1850,
Massachusetts, Vermont, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island passed such
laws, and Connecticut, while repealing an earlier law on her statute
books as being at the time unconstitutional, retained the portion of
it that restrained state officers from assisting in the execution of
the act.
[907] _Congressional Globe_, Twenty-fifth Congress, Third
Session, p. 34.
In the meantime the Southern leaders did not fail to note the
progress of anti-slavery sentiment north of Mason and Dixon's
line. This was not less manifest in the formation of the Liberty
party in the early years of the decade 1840-1850, than in the
legislative and other opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law. Indeed,
so marked an impression had been made upon the minds and sympathies
of anti-slavery men by the brave and successful flight of slaves,
that a Liberty convention at Peterboro, New York, in January, 1842,
issued an address to slaves, declaring that slavery was to be
"tortured even unto death," advising them to seek liberty by flight,
and assuring them that the abolitionist knew no more grateful
employment than that of helping escaping slaves to Canada. In August
of the following year the national convention of the new party,
comprising nearly a thousand delegates from all the free states
except New Hampshire, made the disavowal of the fugitive recovery
clause of the Constitution a part of the party platform, voting by
a decisive majority "to regard and treat the third clause of the
Constitution, whenever applied to the case of a fugitive slave,
as utterly null and void; and consequently as forming no part of
the Constitution of the United States whenever we are called upon
or sworn to support it."[908] About the time of the announcement
of this principle, Mr. Garrison issued in behalf of the American
Anti-Slavery Society an address to the bondmen of the South, in
which they were promised deliverance from their chains, and were
encouraged to run away from their masters. "If you come to us,
and are hungry," ran the address, "we will feed you; if thirsty,
we will give you drink; if naked, we will clothe you; if sick, we
will minister to your necessities; if in prison, we will visit you;
if you need a hiding-place from the face of the pursuer, we will
provide one that even bloodhounds will not scent out."[909]
[908] Wilson, _Rise and Fall of the Slave Power_, Vol. I, pp.
552, 553.
[909] _Ibid._, p. 563.
Such open attacks upon the property rights of planters and
slave-traders must have been extremely aggravating to Southerners,
and, of course, contributed to bring the question of a more
effective Fugitive Slave Law again under the consideration of
Congress, notwithstanding the fact that a large share of that
body's attention was occupied during the period from 1844 to 1848
with matters connected with the annexation of Texas, the Mexican
War and the settlement of the Oregon boundary dispute. In 1847 the
legislature of Kentucky presented a petition to Congress urging
the importance of new laws so framed as to enable the citizens of
slaveholding states to reclaim their negroes when they had absconded
into the free states. This resulted in a bill reported in the
Senate, but the bill never got beyond its second reading. Two years
later an attempt was made in the House to secure legislation for the
same object, but the committee to whom the matter was referred seems
never to have reported.
At intervals more or less frequent, during a period of more than
fifty years, the South had been demanding of Congress adequate
protection for its human property against the depredations of
those Northerners who rejoiced in the work of secret emancipation.
The efforts of the slaveholding section for a stricter fugitive
recovery law had uniformly failed down to 1850, and it seems
altogether likely that the success won in the year named would not
have been realized,[910] if a bill intended to meet the needs of
slave-owners had not been made an essential part of the great scheme
of compromise for the adjustment of the differences threatening
the perpetuity of the Union at the time.[911] The measure that was
finally adopted, as a part of the programme of compromise, was one
introduced into the Senate by Mr. Mason, of Virginia, in the early
part of the first session of the Thirty-first Congress. It was
aimed, said its author, at evils "more deeply seated and widely
extended than those" his colleague recognized. "The state from
whence I came," continued Mr. Mason, "and the states of Kentucky and
Maryland, being those states of the Union that border on the free
states, have had ample experience, not only of the difficulties,
but of the actual impossibility of reclaiming a fugitive when he
once gets within the boundaries of a non-slaveholding state."[912]
Henry Clay, the author of the Compromise, whose disposition had
been to lean to the Northern rather than to the Southern side of
the general controversy, expressed the irritation of his own state,
Kentucky, when he said concerning the question of fugitive slaves:
"Upon this subject I do think that we have just and serious cause
of complaint against the free States. I think they have failed in
fulfilling a great obligation, and the failure is precisely upon
one of those subjects which in its nature is most irritating and
inflammatory to those who live in slave States.... It is our duty
to make the law more effective; and I shall go with the senator
from the South who goes furthest in making penal laws and imposing
the heaviest sanctions for the recovery of fugitive slaves and the
restoration of them to their owners."[913] Delaware and Missouri had
grievances similar to those of Kentucky and other border states. The
region constituted by these states suffered heavy losses through the
operations of the Underground Railroad.[914]
[910] "The wonder is how such an Act came to pass, even by so
lean a vote as it received; for it was voted for by less than
half of the Senate, and by six less than the number of senators
from the slave states alone. It is a wonder how it passed at
all; and the wonder increases on knowing that, of the small
number that voted for it, many were against it, and merely went
along with those who had constituted themselves the particular
guardians of the rights of the slave states, and claimed a lead
in all that concerned them. These self-instituted guardians
were permitted to have their own way, some voting with them
unwillingly, others not voting at all. It was a part of the plan
of 'compromise and pacification' which was then deemed essential
to save the Union; under the fear of danger to the Union on one
hand, and the charms of pacification and compromise on the other,
a few heated spirits got the control and had things their own
way." Benton's _Thirty Years' View_, Vol. II, p. 780.
[911] See Rhodes' _History of the United States_, Vol. I, pp.
130-136, for a discussion of the question whether the Union was
in danger in 1850.
[912] _Congressional Globe_, Thirty-first Congress, First
Session, Appendix, p. 1583.
[913] _Life and Speeches of Henry Clay_, Vol. II, pp. 641, 643.
The speech from which the above quotations are made was delivered
Feb. 5 and 6, 1850.
[914] _Congressional Globe_, Thirty-first Congress, Second
Session, Appendix, p. 1051; McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, p. 31.
That the cotton states also lost considerable property every year
by the escape of slaves to the North appears from a statement of
Senator Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi: "Negroes do escape from
Mississippi frequently," he said, "and the boats constantly passing
by our long line of river frontier furnish great facility to get
into Ohio; and when they do escape it is with great difficulty that
they are recovered; indeed, it seldom occurs that they are restored.
We, though less than the border states, are seriously concerned in
this question.... Those who, like myself, live on that great highway
of the West--the Mississippi River--and are most exposed, have a
present and increasing interest in the matter. We desire laws that
shall be effective, and at the same time within the constitutional
power of Congress; such as shall be adequate, and be secured by
penalties the most stringent which can be imposed."[915] Calhoun
admitted that discontent was universal in the South, and declared
that conciliation could only come when the North consented to meet
certain conditions, one of which was the restoration of fugitive
slaves.
[915] _Congressional Globe_, Thirty-first Congress, First
Session, Appendix, p. 1615.
Many of the speeches contained suggestions and prophecies of
disunion. One of these, made by Pratt, of Maryland, called the
attention of the Senate to a recent address delivered by Mr. Seward,
of New York, before an assembly of Ohioans, in which he urged them
to "extend a cordial welcome to the fugitive who lays his weary
limbs at your door, and _defend him as you would your household
gods_."[916] Another made by Yulee, of Florida, informed the Senate
of a convention then sitting at Cazenovia, New York, attended
by more than thirty runaway slaves, and held for the purpose of
devising ways and means of escape for blacks. The language of the
address to slaves issued by the convention was not calculated to
reassure slave-owners. In part it ran: "Including our children,
we number here in Canada 20,000 souls. The population in the free
States are, with few exceptions, the fugitive slave's friends.
[916] _Ibid._, p. 1592.
"We are poor. We can do little more for your deliverance than pray
to God for it. We will furnish you with pocket compasses, and in the
dark nights you can run away. We cannot furnish you with weapons;
some of us are not inclined to carry arms; but if you can get them,
take them, and, before you go back into bondage, use them, if you
are obliged to take life. The slaveholders would not hesitate to
kill you, rather than not take you back into bondage.
"Numerous as the escapes from slavery are, they would still be
more so, were it not for the master's protection of the rights of
property. You even hesitate to take the slowest of his horses; but
we say take the fastest. Pack up provisions and clothes; and either
get a key, or force the lock, and get his money and start."[917]
In view of such proceedings, openly conducted without hindrance,
the Senator appealed to his auditors and to the country to consider
whether "this Union can long continue?"[918]
[917] _Congressional Globe_, Thirty-first Congress, First
Session, Appendix, pp. 1622, 1623.
[918] _Ibid._
In his famous 7th-of-March speech, Webster freely admitted that
the complaints of the South in regard to the non-rendition of
fugitive slaves were just, and that the North had fallen short of
her duty. He therefore decided to support Mason's Fugitive Slave
Bill, although he wanted it amended in certain particulars, and
sought especially to have in it a clause securing trial by jury
to the refugee in case he denied owing service to the claimant.
He criticised the abolition societies of the North, and said he
thought their operations for the last twenty years had produced
"nothing good or valuable." The press of the South he found to be
as violent as that of the other section. There was, he decided, "no
solid grievance presented by the South within the redress of the
government, ... but the want of a proper regard to the injunction of
the Constitution for the delivery of fugitive slaves."[919]
[919] _Webster's Works_, Vol. V, pp. 354, 355, 357, 358, 361.
Under the combined championship of Webster, Clay and Calhoun, and
to bring about better feeling between the two parts of the country,
which in the eyes of many contemporaries seemed on the verge of
splitting asunder, the new Fugitive Slave Law was passed by the
Senate, August 26, 1850, and by the House a few days later. By the
signature of President Fillmore the measure became a law, September
18.
The vote by which the new law had been passed through the two Houses
of Congress did not betoken a disposition at the North to meet
the obligations it imposed upon that section. Only three of the
senators representing free states voted for the measure. These were
Dodge and Jones, of Indiana, and Sturgeon, of Pennsylvania. Among
the one hundred and thirty-six members from the Northern states
in the House, only thirty-one voted with the slaveholders. Three
of the thirty-one were Whigs, the rest Democrats.[920] Jefferson
Davis showed that he comprehended the true situation when he said,
during the following session of Congress, that the history of the
law proved that it would not furnish the needed security, because
the Northern majority did not pass the bill, but merely allowed
the Southern minority to pass it, and because the measure had to
be executed in the North.[921] This view of the case seems not to
have been taken by those representing the border slave states.
The comprehensive character of Clay's scheme was favorable to the
incorporation in it of a measure stringent enough to suit the most
aggrieved without exciting the opposition such a measure would have
called out if presented by itself.
[920] Von Holst, _Constitutional and Political History of the
United States_, Vol. IV, pp. 18, 19. The hundred and thirty-six
Northern members comprised seventy-six Whigs and fifty Democrats.
[921] _Congressional Globe_, Thirty-first Congress, Second
Session, Appendix, p. 324. See also Von Holst's work, Vol. IV, p.
27.
Whatever the expectations of the various slaveholding states with
regard to the recovery of their runaways under the new law, Joshua
R. Giddings, himself an enthusiastic agent of the Underground
Railroad and a better judge of the real convictions of the North
than Webster, took the earliest occasion to give utterance to the
sentiments of the people upon whom depended the success or failure
of the law of 1850. Giddings did not delay, nor did he mince
matters. In the earliest days of the session following that in which
the compromise had been passed he denounced the Fugitive Slave Law
and predicted its failure. Concerning the citizens of his own state,
he said: "The freemen of Ohio will never turn out to chase the
panting fugitive. They will never be metamorphosed into bloodhounds,
to track him to his hiding-place, and seize and drag him out, and
deliver him to his tormentors. Rely upon it they will die first....
Let no man tell me there is no higher law than this fugitive bill.
We feel there is a law of right, of justice, of freedom, implanted
in the breast of every intelligent human being, that bids him look
with scorn upon this libel on all that is called law."[922]
[922] _Congressional Globe_, Thirty-first Congress, Second
Session, pp. 15, 16. Von Holst, _Constitutional and Political
History of the United States_, Vol. IV, p. 15.
That slave-owners counted on deriving benefits from the law appears
from the great number of attempts at once made to reclaim runaways,
and the frequent prosecutions of those guilty of facilitating their
escape. The period sometimes designated the "era of slave-hunting"
began in the North. Slave-owners and their agents entered vigorously
upon the chase, and a larger number of communities in the free
states than ever before were invaded by men engaged in the
disgusting business of capturing blacks, intelligent and ambitious
enough to seek their own liberty. Villages, towns and cities from
Iowa to Maine, but especially in the middle states, witnessed
scenes calculated to awaken the popular detestation of slavery as
it had never been awakened before. Pitiable distress fell upon the
fugitive settlers in the North and did much to quicken consciences
everywhere. The capture of a fugitive in the place where he had
been living invariably caused an outburst of indignation; and if
the victim were not rescued before his removal by his captors a
sum of money was raised if possible, and his freedom was purchased
if that could be done. All of these circumstances contributed to
increase the traffic along the numerous and tortuous lines of the
Underground Railroad, which, according to the testimony of surviving
abolitionists, did its most thriving business in all parts of the
North during the decade from 1850 to 1860. The marked increase in
the number of negroes seeking aid on their way to Canada at the
outset of this period was due to the flight of many of the fugitive
settlers from their accustomed haunts in the free states; but the
supply later on must be attributed to the ease of communication
through various channels by which slaves were every day learning
of the body of abolitionists eager to help them to freedom. The
readiness of the Northern people to act in opposition to the law
arose from their abhorrence of a measure that they considered
unrighteous and cruel, and from their resentment at the requirement
that they must join in the hunt, so that the fugitive might be
promptly enslaved.[923] The wide-spread opposition to the law led
to prosecutions of underground workers in various places, and these
prosecutions greatly helped to keep the slavery question before the
attention of the country, despite the wishes and endeavors of the
politicians who strove to silence the issue.[924]
[923] McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, p. 53.
[924] "These prosecutions attracted more attention to the slavery
question in a few months than the abolitionists had been able to
arouse in twenty years." Professor Edward Channing, _The United
States of America, 1765-1865_, p. 241.
The record of the year 1851 illustrates the character of the general
contest, which had already set in before the enactment of the new
law, but which assumed thenceforth an importance it had never had
before. Early in the year Shadrach was seized in Boston, carried
before the commissioner, and remanded to custody, but was rescued
by a crowd of negroes and hurried off to Canada. Later Sims was
caught and confined in the court-house until he was marched to Long
Wharf under guard of three hundred policemen. William and Ellen
Craft, fugitives from Georgia, were tracked to Boston, but, aided by
Theodore Parker and other faithful friends, succeeded in escaping
to England. Other notable instances of pursuit occurred at Chicago,
Illinois, Poughkeepsie, New York, and Westchester and Wilkesbarre,
Pennsylvania. At Philadelphia a free negro was arrested, proved a
slave by perjured testimony and taken to Maryland; fortunately he
gained his liberty again by the refusal of the planter to whom he
was delivered to identify him as his lost property. At Buffalo an
alleged fugitive was released on writ of habeas corpus by Judge
Conkling. At the hearing that followed the lack of evidence caused
the judge to discharge the prisoner, and he was soon in Canada. In
the attempt of the Maryland slave-owner, Gorsuch, and his party,
to recover certain runaway slaves from Christiana, Pennsylvania,
Gorsuch was killed and his son seriously wounded, while the
fugitives managed to escape. This affair caused intense excitement,
not only in Pennsylvania, but throughout the country. Another case
resulting in the death of one of the parties concerned grew out of
the kidnapping of a free negro girl from the house of a Mr. Miller,
in Nottingham, Pennsylvania; Miller succeeded in rescuing the girl,
but he was mysteriously murdered before he reached home. Near the
close of the year 1851 Jerry McHenry was arrested in Syracuse, New
York, while an agricultural fair and a convention of the Liberty
party were in progress in that city. The attempted escape and the
recapture of the negro wrought up the crowd to a state of intense
feeling, which was not relieved until the fugitive was rescued
and sent to Canada.[925] There were many other instances in which
communities were given the opportunity to show their spirit in the
defence of helpless bondmen.
[925] F. W. Seward, _Seward at Washington as Senator and
Secretary of State_, 1891, Vol. I, pp. 169, 170. McDougall,
_Fugitive Slaves_, pp. 44, 47-51, 58, 59.
The political leaders and the administration, who were responsible
for the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law, were not willing to see
its provisions thus trampled under foot. Upon the reassembling of
Congress in December, 1850, President Fillmore expressed himself in
his message as pleased with the compromise measures, although, he
admitted, they had not yet realized their purpose fully. "It would
be strange," he said, "if they had been received with immediate
approbation by people and states prejudiced and heated by the
exciting controversies of their representatives." He nevertheless
had faith that the various enactments would be generally sustained.
The tinge of doubt in the communication of the President pretty
certainly referred to the fierce denunciations of the Fugitive
Slave Law recently uttered by mass-meetings in various parts of
the Northern states, and to several cases of resistance where the
execution of the law had been attempted. His reassuring expressions
voiced his own hope and that of the political magnates; and he meant
also, perhaps, to carry assurance to the South. Some balm seemed
necessary, for the Georgia convention in accepting the compromise
as a "permanent adjustment of the sectional controversy," voted,
"That it is the deliberate opinion of this convention that upon
the faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Bill by the proper
authorities depends the preservation of our much-loved Union."[926]
[926] _Boston Atlas_, Dec. 17, 1850.
The open resistance to the law upon several occasions in 1851
brought opportunities to the administration to exert itself in favor
of the faithful execution of the law. After the rescue of Shadrach
from the United States marshal on February 15, much excitement
existed, especially at the centre of government. The President
immediately issued a proclamation commanding all civil and military
officers, and calling on all good citizens, to "aid in quelling
this and similar combinations" and to assist in capturing the
persons that had set the law at defiance. The Senate, after debate,
adopted a resolution requesting the President to lay before it
information relating to the rescue, and inquiring whether further
legislation was desirable. This request was promptly complied
with by the executive. Then Clay, the author of the resolution,
urged that the President be invested with extraordinary power to
enforce the law, but failed to gain substantial support for his
proposition. In the meantime five of the rescuers of Shadrach were
indicted and tried, but owing to the disagreement of the jury none
of them were convicted. The energetic action of the administration
and its supporters had apparently accomplished no result, except
to demonstrate the difficulties with which the enforcement of the
Fugitive Slave Act was encompassed.
The same lesson was taught in two important instances toward the
end of this year, when the government undertook to carry the law
into effect. The Gorsuch tragedy at Christiana, Pennsylvania, led
the President to order the United States marshal, district attorney
and commissioner from Philadelphia, with forty-five United States
marines from the navy-yard, to assist in arresting those supposed
to have been engaged in the fight. The fugitives had escaped and
could not be recovered, but a number of other persons, most of whom
were colored, were arrested, taken to Philadelphia, and indicted
for treason. But the efforts of the authorities to convict were
unavailing, and the prisoners went scot free.[927]
[927] For references see Appendix B, 53, Christiana case, p. 373.
Within a few days after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law
in September of the previous year, the spirit of resistance in
Syracuse, New York, had manifested itself in public meetings
at which the law was denounced and a Vigilance Committee
organized.[928] In the early part of June following, Daniel Webster,
who was travelling extensively through the Northern states and
exerting his personal and official influence to secure obedience
to the law, visited Syracuse and made a speech. In the course of
his remarks he insisted in no conciliatory terms that the law
must be enforced. He said, "Those persons in this city who mean
to oppose the execution of the Fugitive Slave Law are traitors!
traitors!! traitors!!! This law ought to be obeyed, and it will be
enforced--yes, it shall be enforced, and that, too, in the midst
of the next anti-slavery convention, if then there shall be any
occasion to enforce it."
[928] S. J. May, _Some Recollections of our Anti-Slavery
Conflict_, p. 349.
As if in fulfillment of this prediction of the Secretary of
State, on October 1, 1851, a day when a convention of the Liberty
party was in progress, an attempt was made to capture one Jerry
McHenry, an undoubted fugitive; but the Vigilance Committee, under
efficient leadership, succeeded in rescuing him out of the hands of
his captors. At this outcome there was much exultation among the
anti-slavery people, as also when later the prosecution instituted
against eighteen of the rescuers ended in a failure to convict. It
is worthy of note that Seward was the first to sign the bond of
those indicted; and that Gerrit Smith, then a member of Congress,
made a defiant speech in the fall of 1852 in Canandaigua, where the
trial of one of the rescuers was going on.[929]
[929] _Ibid._, pp. 373-384; Frothingham, _Life of Gerrit Smith_,
p. 117; McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, pp. 48, 49; Wilson, _Rise
and Fall of the Slave Power_, Vol. II, pp. 327, 328.
[Illustration: HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.]
Such incidents, together with the aggravation caused by the removal
of fugitives successfully seized, made it plain that the compromise
was not the "finality" that the politicians declared it to be;
and that the Whig and Democratic parties chose to decree it in
their national platforms in the summer of 1852. The principles of
political opposition determined by the conditions of the time
were uttered by the convention of the Free Soil party, with which
many of the underground operators were now allied, in the words:
"No more slave states, no more slave territories, no nationalized
slavery, and no national legislation for the extradition of
slaves." The issue of the presidential campaign in the election of
Pierce, a compromise Democrat, marks only a temporary disturbance
in the progress of sentiment, due to the desire of the country to
have rest, the disinclination of many Whigs to support their own
candidate, General Winfield Scott, and the policy of acquiescence
he represented; and the solidarity of action among the Democrats,
who were generally satisfied both with their principles and their
candidate.
As it was the Fugitive Slave Law that brought the North face to
face with slavery nationalized, so it was the Fugitive Slave Law
that occasioned, in the spring of 1852, the production of _Uncle
Tom's Cabin_, a novel the great political significance of which
has been generally acknowledged. The observations and experience
that made possible for Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe the writing of
this remarkable book were gained by her while living at Cincinnati,
where she was enabled to study the effects of slavery. While thus a
resident on the borders of Kentucky, she numbered among her friends
slaveholders on the one side of the Ohio River and abolitionists on
the other. At the time of her first trip across the Ohio in 1833,
she visited an estate, which is described as that of Colonel Shelby
in _Uncle Tom's Cabin_.[930] Her associations and sympathies brought
home to her the personal aspects of slavery, and her house on Walnut
Hills early become a station on the Underground Railroad, remaining
so doubtless till 1850, when she removed with her husband, Professor
Calvin Stowe, to Brunswick, Maine.
[930] C. E. Stowe, _Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe_, pp. 71, 72.
During the intervening years she was unconsciously gleaning
incidents and scenes and discovering characters for her future
book. The woful experiences of her midnight visitors, whose hunger
for freedom rose superior to every other need, awoke her deepest
compassion, and the neighborhood in which she lived, nay, even
her own household, supplied the circumstances and adventures
depicted in the lives of some of her most admirable characters.
Mrs. Stowe herself declared _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ to be "a collection
and arrangement of real incidents,--of actions really performed,
of words and expressions really uttered,--grouped together with
reference to a general result, in the same manner that the mosaic
artist groups his fragments of various stones into one general
picture."[931] For example she points out that the service of
Senator Bird in the incident of the novel in which Eliza escapes
from her pursuers Tom Locker and Marks had its counterpart in the
service rendered a negro girl in her own employ by Professor Stowe
and his brother-in-law, Henry Ward Beecher, in 1839. This girl was
secretly conveyed northward by her escorts a distance of twelve
miles to the house of John Van Zandt, another station-keeper of
the Underground Road; and Van Zandt it was who "performed the good
deed which the author in her story ascribes to Van Tromp."[932]
Concerning the leading Quaker character in her book Mrs. Stowe
says: "The character of Rachel Halliday was a real one, but she
has passed away to her reward. Simeon Halliday, calmly risking
fine and imprisonment for his love to God and man, has had in this
country many counterparts among the sect. The writer had in mind,
at the time of writing, the scenes in the trial of Thomas Garet,
of Wilmington, Delaware, for the crime of hiring a hack to convey
a mother and four children from Newcastle jail to Wilmington, a
distance of _five_ miles."[933] The thrilling adventures of Eliza in
escaping across the Ohio River with her child in her arms as the ice
was breaking up was an actual occurrence that took place fifty miles
above Cincinnati, at Ripley, an initial station of an important
underground route.[934]
[931] _A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin_, p. 5; Charles Dudley Warner
in _The Atlantic Monthly_, September, 1896, p. 312.
[932] _A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin_, p. 23; C. E. Stowe, _Life
of Harriet Beecher Stowe_, p. 93; _Uncle Tom's Cabin_; Howe,
_Historical Collections of Ohio_, Vol. II, pp. 102, 103; J. W.
Shuckers, _Life of Chase_, p. 53.
[933] _A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin_, p. 54.
[934] _Reminiscences of Levi Coffin_, pp. 147-151; Howe,
_Historical Collections of Ohio_, Vol. II, p. 104; see also
article on "Early Cincinnati," by Judge Joseph Cox in the
_Cincinnati Times-Star_, Feb. 6, 1891; a report of "The Story
of Eliza," as told by the Rev. S. G. W. Rankin, printed in the
_Boston Transcript_, Nov. 30, 1895, an article on Harriet Beecher
Stowe, in the _Cincinnati Enquirer_, Nov. 3, 1895, p. 17.
By the combination of such elements under the crystallizing
influence of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Mrs. Stowe made her
story. Intent on having the people of the North understand what
the "system" was, about which so many seemed apathetic, she set to
work in response to appeals to her to take up her pen. The result,
wholly unexpected, was the production of a book that did for the
whole population of the free states what the Underground Railroad
had been doing for a part only: the author made real the sin of
slavery to the consciences of freemen, by an object-lesson in the
possible evils of slavery and the desire of the slave to be free. In
Harriet Beecher Stowe the thousands of fugitive slaves that had been
unwittingly acting as missionaries in the cause of freedom through
the earlier years found at last a champion whose words carried their
touching story to the multitudes. The disheartening circumstances
under which her novel had been composed and the exhausted condition
in which the author found herself at its conclusion did not permit
her to look for anything but the failure of her undertaking. As
she finished the last proof-sheets "it seemed to her that there
was no hope; that nobody would hear, nobody would read, nobody
would pity; that this frightful system, which had already pursued
its victims into the free States, might at last even threaten them
in Canada."[935] But the success of the book was immediate. Three
thousand copies were sold on the first day of publication, and more
than three hundred thousand in this country within the year.[936]
[935] Quoted by Charles Dudley Warner in _The Atlantic Monthly_,
September, 1896, p. 315.
[936] _Ibid._
The political effect of the novel has been disparaged by a few
writers, because it did not cause anti-slavery gains in the national
election occurring in the fall of 1852. Thus George Ticknor wrote
in December of that year, "It deepens the horror of servitude,
but it does not affect a single vote."[937] This was certainly
true, for the mass of Northerners were resting in the belief that
a substantial political settlement had been reached in the great
compromise. It was not to be expected that this belief, which was
the outcome of weeks of strenuous discussion, was to be easily
tossed aside under the emotional stimulus of a novel. The immediate
effect of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ as a political agency lay in the
renewal on a vast scale of the consideration of the question of
slavery, which the compromise had been thought by so many to have
settled. Its remote effect, which did not show itself until the
latter part of the decade 1850-1860 has been best explained by
the historian, James Ford Rhodes. This writer says, "The mother's
opinion was a potent factor in politics between 1852 and 1860,
and boys in their teens in the one year were voters in the other.
It is often remarked that previous to the war the Republican
party attracted the great majority of school-boys, and that the
first voters were an important factor in its final success; ...
the youth of America whose first ideas on slavery were formed by
reading _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ were ready to vote with the party whose
existence was based on opposition to an extension of the great
evil."[938] They were also ready to fight for the cause of union and
of freedom in 1861.
[937] _Life of George Ticknor_, Vol. I, p. 286.
[938] _History of the United States_, Vol. I, pp. 284, 285.
Soon after the publication of Mrs. Stowe's book, Sumner began
his movement in the Senate to secure the repeal of the Fugitive
Slave Law. In May, 1852, he presented a memorial from the Society
of Friends in New England, asking for its repeal;[939] in July
he offered a resolution instructing the Committee on Judiciary
to report a bill for this purpose;[940] and in August he sought
to secure his end by proposing an amendment to the civil and
diplomatic appropriations bill.[941] In the speech made at the
time he presented this amendment, a speech said to rank with that
of Webster on the Compromise in 1850 in the popular interest it
aroused, Sumner pointed to the example of Washington, who let one of
his slaves remain unmolested in New Hampshire rather than "excite a
mob or riot, or even uneasy sensations in the minds of well-disposed
citizens." The execution of the Fugitive Slave Law, he asked
Congress to note, involved mobs, cruelty and violence everywhere its
enforcement was tried. The wonderful reception given _Uncle Tom's
Cabin_ was, he thought, an expression of the true public sentiment.
"A woman, inspired by Christian genius, enters the lists, like
another Joan of Arc, and with marvellous powers sweeps the chords
of the popular heart. Now melting to tears, and now inspiring to
rage, her work everywhere touches the conscience, and makes the
slave-hunter more hateful."[942] He saw the import of the appeal of
fugitive slaves to Northern communities for protection and liberty.
"For them every sentiment of humanity is aroused. Rude and ignorant
they may be, but in their very efforts for freedom they claim
kindred with all that is noble in the past. Romance has no stories
of more thrilling interest; classical antiquity has preserved no
examples of adventure and trial more worthy of renown. They are
among the heroes of our age. Among them are those whose names will
be treasured in the annals of their race. By eloquent voice they
have done much to make their wrongs known, and to secure the respect
of the world. History will soon lend her avenging pen. Proscribed
by you during life, they will proscribe you through all time. Sir,
already judgment is beginning; a righteous public sentiment palsies
your enactment."[943]
[939] Peirce, _Life of Sumner_, Vol. III, p. 283.
[940] _Ibid._, p. 289.
[941] _Ibid._, p. 292.
[942] Peirce, _Life of Sumner_, Vol. III, pp. 296, 297;
_Congressional Globe_, Vol. XXV, p. 1112.
[943] _Congressional Globe_, Vol. XXV, p. 1112; Peirce, _Life of
Sumner_, Vol. III, p. 297.
In a public speech made in 1850 Mr. Garrison had this to say,
"Who are among our ablest speakers? Who are the best qualified to
address the public mind on the subject of slavery? Your fugitive
slaves,--your Douglasses, Browns and Bibbs,--who are astonishing
all with the cogency of their words and the power of their
reasoning." _Life of Garrison_, Vol. III, p. 311.
Through his denunciation of the law, his justification of those
who aided the fugitive, and his recognition of the power of
the fugitive's appeal, Sumner may be said to have become the
representative and spokesman in the Senate of fugitive slaves and
their Northern friends. How closely he identified himself with their
cause is indicated by his determined efforts to secure the repeal
of the obnoxious law, efforts repeated in July, 1854, and February,
1855, and carried by him to a successful issue in 1864.[944]
[944] Peirce, _Life of Sumner_, Vol. III, p. 309, foot-note; Vol.
IV, pp. 71, 175-177.
The action of public sentiment in the Northern states, which, he
said, palsied the Fugitive Slave Law, was accompanied, during the
decade from 1850 to 1860, by tokens of open violation of the law,
defiant resolutions adopted by mass-meetings, and obstructional
legislation passed by various free states; the spirit of
nullification was thus aroused in many localities north of Mason and
Dixon's line. The demands of character and humanity had long been
obeyed by many men and women for whom any compromise involving the
continuance in slavery of their fellow-men was a dreadful crime.
These persons had refused to yield obedience to that statute which
in their belief was subversive of the "higher law." Under the
action of causes that have been discussed in earlier chapters, the
sentiment that had developed the secret and illicit traffic along
numerous lines of the Underground Railroad became more obtrusive and
less regardful of congressional legislation. Besides participating
in the public and legitimate activities of anti-slavery societies,
and sharing in the organization of the Liberty and Free Soil
parties, the abolitionists formed vigilance committees in various
communities, the avowed purpose of which was to thwart the Fugitive
Slave Act; and while these bodies held their meetings in secret
and guarded the names of their members, it was often a matter of
common report in those localities that certain well-known men of the
neighborhood were active members. It was the Vigilance Committee of
Syracuse that rescued Jerry McHenry from custody of the officers,
in the presence of a great crowd; and the leaders in the affair,
Gerrit Smith, Charles A. Wheaton and Samuel J. May, far from seeking
oblivion, published an acknowledgment in the newspapers that they
had aided all they could in the rescue of Jerry, were ready for
trial, and would rest their defence on the "unconstitutionality and
extreme wickedness" of the Fugitive Slave Law. None of these men
were tried. The citizens of Onondaga County held a mass-convention
in approval of the liberation of the negro, and unanimously adopted
resolutions justifying and applauding the act.[945]
[945] S. J. May, _Some Recollections of our Anti-Slavery
Conflict_, pp. 380, 381. Mr. May says another convention was held
ten days later to condemn the action of the rescuers, and did so,
but not without dissent.
From this time on till the outbreak of the Civil War bold and open
opposition to the authority of the federal law is a purpose not to
be mistaken or overlooked. The state reports of the Pennsylvania
and Massachusetts Anti-Slavery societies boasted of the steadily
increasing numbers of fugitives aided by abolitionists at many
centres, and heaped reproaches on the judges and commissioners that
gave decisions adverse to runaways.[946] Fugitive slave cases were
stubbornly contested in the courts on the ground that the law of
1850 was unconstitutional. The series of cases in which the law was
subjected to the penetrating criticism of some of the ablest lawyers
in the country is a long and interesting one; nothing in the history
of the times more clearly shows the effect of the Underground
Railroad in rousing ever-widening indignation at the hunt for
fugitives.[947]
[946] See the reports after 1850.
[947] For selected cases see Appendix B, p. 372.
In the spring of 1854 two cases, one in Wisconsin and the other
in Massachusetts, served to show the pitch to which the spirit of
resistance among the most responsible citizens could rise in both
the West and the East. On March 10, 1854, Joshua Glover, who was
living near Racine, Wisconsin, was arrested as a fugitive slave by
United States deputy marshals and the claimant, B. W. Garland, of
St. Louis. After a severe struggle Glover was knocked down, placed
in a wagon, driven to Milwaukee, and there lodged in jail. The
news of the capture reached Racine in a few hours, and a popular
meeting, larger than ever before held in the town, assembled on the
court-house square to take action. At this meeting it was resolved
to secure Glover a fair trial in Wisconsin; and it was voted,
"That inasmuch as the Senate of the United States has repealed all
compromises adopted by the Congress of the United States,[948]
we, as citizens of Wisconsin, are justified in declaring, _and
do declare, the slave-catching law of 1850 disgraceful and also
repealed_." This was but one of many nullifying resolutions adopted
about this time in various parts of the North, although most of the
resolutions were somewhat less extreme in statement.[949]
[948] The Kansas-Nebraska legislation, repealing the Missouri
Compromise of 1820, which was at this time before Congress, is
here referred to.
[949] Vroman Mason on "The Fugitive Slave Law in Wisconsin, with
Reference to Nullification Sentiment," in the _Proceedings of the
State Historical Society of Wisconsin_, 1895, pp. 122, 123.
At an afternoon meeting the deliberations ended in the decision
of about a hundred citizens of Racine to take boat at once for
Milwaukee. Upon arrival this delegation found the latter city in an
uproar. A meeting of five thousand persons had already appointed a
Committee of Vigilance to see that Glover had a fair trial, and this
demonstration had led the authorities to call for the local militia
to preserve order; but the militia did not appear. Such was now the
temper of the crowd that it could be satisfied with nothing less
than the immediate release of the prisoner. Glover was therefore
demanded, but, as he was not forthcoming, the jail door was battered
in, the negro brought out, placed in a wagon and forwarded to Canada
by the Underground Railroad. The act of the rescuers was indorsed by
the public sentiment of the state; with but few exceptions justified
by the newspapers. Among the resolutions passed by mass-meetings
held to take action against the Kansas-Nebraska bill, then pending
in Congress, there was usually one thanking the rescuers for their
conduct.
Remembering with satisfaction the deliverance of Jerry, a special
convention assembled at Syracuse, New York, on March 22, 1854, and
sent a congratulatory message to Milwaukee and Racine, offering
to join them and all the sister cities of the North in a "holy
confederacy, which ... shall swear that no broken-hearted fugitive
shall ever again be consigned to slavery from the North, under the
accursed act of 1850." A state convention met at Milwaukee, April
13 and 14, which was attended by delegates from all the populated
districts. This assembly adopted a number of resolutions, several of
which were quotations from the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions,
including the famous one declaring "that, as in other cases of
compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an
equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions, as of the
mode and measure of redress." The Fugitive Slave Law was pronounced
unconstitutional, and aid was promised the rescuers of Glover.
It is interesting to note that at this convention a state league was
also formed, which has been called a forerunner of the Republican
party in Wisconsin.
The Supreme Court of the state was soon given an opportunity to
place itself on record with regard to the validity of the federal
law. The case of one of the rescuers, Sherman M. Booth, came before
it for decision. In passing judgment the court showed itself to
be in line with the sentiment of the state, for it declared the
act of 1850 unconstitutional; the principal grounds assigned were
the absence of congressional power to legislate on the subject of
the surrender of fugitives from labor, the improper conferring
of judicial authority upon commissioners, and the viciousness of
depriving a person of his liberty 'without due process of law.'
Booth was, of course, discharged. But the matter was not dropped
here. The United States District Court now obtained jurisdiction
of the case; the jury found the prisoner guilty, and the judge
sentenced him to imprisonment for one month, and to pay a fine of
$1,000 and the costs of prosecution--in all, $1,451. The news of
the conviction caused great excitement; denunciatory meetings were
again the order of the day; and money was subscribed for the further
defence of the prisoners. Some of the resolutions passed at this
time did not stop short of asserting the readiness of the people to
maintain their cause with the bayonet. Application was made to the
Supreme Court of the state for a writ of habeas corpus, and Booth,
together with a colleague, Rycraft, was again released.
The controversy now came before the Supreme Court at Washington, and
on petition of the Attorney-General a writ of error was granted by
that tribunal to be served on the Supreme Court of Wisconsin. The
state court, however, refused to obey this writ. At length, on March
6, 1857, the United States Supreme Court assumed jurisdiction,
in an unusual way, acting on the basis of a certified copy of
proceedings, which did not appear upon the official record. At the
December term, 1858, the judgment of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin
was reversed, and that court was directed to return Booth into
federal custody. Again the state court would not yield obedience.
Booth was therefore rearrested by the United States marshal, March
1, 1860, and was confined in the custom-house at Milwaukee. The
friends of the prisoner once more applied to the state Supreme Court
for a writ of habeas corpus, but, failing to get it on account of
a change in the personnel of the court, they did not rest until
they had rescued him from the government prison five months later.
On October 8 Booth was again arrested, and this time he remained
in prison until, under the pressure brought to bear upon President
Buchanan, he was pardoned just before Lincoln's inauguration.[950]
[950] Ableman _vs._ Booth; for references see Appendix B, 62,
Glover rescue case, p. 374.
Notwithstanding the obstinacy of the highest state court in refusing
to carry out the commands of the highest United States court,
the decision rendered by the latter in Booth's case was of great
importance. It clearly defined for the first time the limits of
state authority and disclosed the powerlessness of state courts
to override the jurisdiction granted to the federal courts by the
Constitution of the United States.
The people of Wisconsin, however, were unwilling to recognize this
fact. Having enacted a personal liberty law in 1857, they made
Byron Paine, a young lawyer, who had taken a prominent part in the
defence of Booth, their candidate in 1859 for associate justice of
the Supreme Court, and elected him on a combined anti-slavery and
state rights issue. Thus the state maintained its ground until the
eve of the Civil War. Then it relinquished it to assist in coercing
South Carolina and other Southern states from their secession, the
right of which these states defended by the same doctrine of state
sovereignty.[951]
[951] This account of Booth's case is in the main a condensation
of the excellent and exhaustive discussion given by Mr. Vroman
Mason in the _Proceedings of the State Historical Society_,
1895, pp. 117-144. Other material will be found in _The Story of
Wisconsin_, 1890, by R. G. Thwaites, pp. 247-254; _A Complete
Record of the John Olin Family_, 1893, by C. C. Olin, pp.
liii-lxxiv; the _Liberator_, April 7 and 24, 1854; 3 _Wisconsin
Reports_, pp. 1-64; 21 _Howard's Reports_, p. 506 et seq.;
Wilson, _Rise and Fall of the Slave Power_, Vol. II, pp. 444-446.
The Glover rescue occurred while the Kansas-Nebraska Act was pending
in Congress. The attempted rescue of Burns came just after this
piece of legislation, already passed by the Senate, had been voted
by the House. This measure, which set aside the Missouri Compromise
prohibiting slavery from all the Louisiana territory lying north of
36° 30' north latitude, except that included within the State of
Missouri, deeply stirred public feeling in the free states: thus
the violence of the demonstrations in the Booth and Burns cases was
in some measure a protest against Douglas legislation. Burns was
arrested in Boston on May 24, 1854, under a warrant granted by the
United States commissioner. He felt his case to be hopeless, and so
told Richard H. Dana, Jr., and Theodore Parker; but they urged him
to make a defence, and prevailed on the commissioner to postpone the
hearing. Boston was soon ablaze with indignation kindled in part by
the inflammatory handbills scattered broadcast by members of the
Vigilance Committee. These handbills contained invectives against
the "kidnapper," and expressed a sentiment prevalent in New England,
as in other parts of the North, when they declared "the compromises
trampled upon by the slave power when in the path of slavery are to
be crammed down the throat of the North."
In response to messages from the Vigilance Committee Thomas
Wentworth Higginson, A. Bronson Alcott and others hurried to Boston
to consult with the leaders there on what was best to be done. A
mass-meeting had been called for Friday evening, the 26th, to be
held in Faneuil Hall, and it was now planned to make an attack, at
the height of this meeting, on the court-house, where Burns was in
durance, and "send the whole meeting pell-mell to Court Square,
ready to fall in behind the leaders and bring out the slave." The
city was in a state of wild excitement when the time for action
came, and it was natural that in the confusion existing some of
the arrangements should miscarry. The crowd that filled Faneuil
Hall was so dense as to cut off all communication with the speakers
on the platform, and prevented concerted action. When, under the
impassioned oratory of Phillips, Parker and others, the audience
had given evidences of its readiness to undertake the rescue,
the announcement that an attack upon the court-house was about
to begin was made from the rear of the hall, and it was proposed
that the meeting should adjourn to Court Square. Phillips had not
received notice of the project, and the other speakers had not fully
comprehended it. The alarm was thought to be a scheme to break up
the meeting and was not followed by the decisive action necessary to
success.
Arriving at the court-house the crowd found a small party under the
lead of Higginson, Stowell and a negro battering in a door with
a stick of timber. Entrance was gained by a few only,--who found
themselves in the hands of the police,--while the concourse outside
was daunted at the outset by the mysterious killing of one of the
marshal's deputies. The arrest of several of Higginson's companions
followed, and a renewal of the assault, if there was any danger
of such a thing, was prevented by the approach of two companies
of artillery and two more of marines ordered out by the mayor to
preserve the peace. Troops were retained at the court-house during
the examination of Burns, and it is reported by an eye-witness that
the seat of justice "had the air of a beleaguered fortress." On the
2d of June Commissioner Loring remanded the fugitive to slavery.
The presence in Boston of a multitude of visitors attracted thither
by the annual meeting of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, the
state convention of the Free Soil party, and the spring meetings
of the religious bodies, as well as by the arrest of the negro,
led the authorities to take all precautions to forestall any fresh
attempt at rescue when the fugitive should be sent out of the city.
Accordingly, over a thousand soldiers with loaded muskets, and
furnished with a cannon loaded with grape-shot, were detailed to
assist the city police and a large number of deputy marshals to
carry out the law. In the procession that accompanied Burns to the
United States revenue cutter, by which he was to be carried back
to Virginia, there were four platoons of marines and a battalion
of artillery, besides the marshal's civil posse of one hundred and
twenty-five men. Fifty thousand people lined the streets along which
this procession passed, and greeted it with hisses and groans, while
over their heads were displayed many emblems of mourning and shame.
It is little wonder that the _Enquirer_ of Richmond, Virginia,
commenting with satisfaction on the rendition of Burns, was led to
add, "but a few more such victories and the South is undone."[952]
Such was the state of public opinion in Massachusetts that the Board
of Overseers of Harvard College declined to confirm the election
of Commissioner Loring as a member of the Harvard faculty; and the
people petitioned, until their request was granted, for his removal
from the office of judge of probate.
[952] T. W. Higginson in _The Atlantic Monthly_, for March, 1897,
p. 349-354; Rhodes, _History of the United States_, Vol. I, pp.
500-506; Wilson, _Rise and Fall of the Slave Power_, Vol. II, pp.
434, 444.
Similar hostility to the Fugitive Slave Law existed in Illinois.
John Reynolds, who had been governor of the state, wrote about 1855
that when President Jackson issued his proclamation in December,
1832, condemning nullification in South Carolina, the legislature
of Illinois hailed it with gratification and pledged the state to
sustain the executive in his purpose to enforce the federal laws at
all hazards. Jackson's proclamation, he said, had a strong tendency
to suppress the spirit of nullification throughout the Union. The
law of 1850 had been framed in pursuance of the Constitution, and
was hailed as the foundation of sectional peace and happiness, but
"within a few years, a section of the State of Illinois, the city
of Chicago, is not disposed to execute this act of Congress. The
opposition in Illinois to this law is not extensive, but confined to
a single city, so far as I know. Yet in that disaffected district
the act is a dead letter...."[953] The number of centres in Illinois
in which the act was disapproved and violated was far beyond the
knowledge of ex-Governor Reynolds.
[953] John Reynolds' _History of Illinois_, 1855, pp. 269-271.
In Ohio incidents arising out of the operations of the Underground
Railroad became the occasions for serious contests between the state
and federal authorities. On May 15, 1857, the United States deputy
marshal for southern Ohio, with nine assistants, entered the house
of Udney Hyde, near Mechanicsburg, Champaign County, in pursuit of
a fugitive slave. The approach of the posse had been observed by
the negro, who took refuge in Hyde's garret. Some firing was done
by both the negro and the marshal, with the result that the officer
and his party were glad to take their positions outside of the
house. Here they were soon found by a crowd of citizens from the
neighboring town, whose sympathies were so unmistakably with the
fugitive that the pursuers decided to leave without delay. Returning
twelve days later, they were told that the fugitive, Addison White,
had gone to Canada. Thereupon they arrested several persons in the
neighborhood on the charge of aiding a slave to escape, and set off
with these persons ostensibly for Urbana, where the examination was
to be held.
Instead of going to Urbana, the party took a southern course through
Clark and Green counties. The sheriff of Clark County, who organized
a company to give chase, overtook the marshal and his men, and
received at their hands a severe beating. Bands of angry citizens
now scoured the country, and, at length, after a skirmish locally
known as "the battle of Lumbarton," captured the marshal's posse. On
the charge of assault with intent to kill, the prisoners were placed
in jail at Springfield. This action occasioned a serious clash
between the United States District Court for the southern district
of Ohio and the state courts; and the federal tribunal asserted
its jurisdiction by releasing the marshal's posse, although in the
decision rendered it was admitted that there "was a question whether
the marshal had not exceeded authority in the use of unnecessary
force."
So critical had the situation now become that Governor Chase
determined to have a personal conference with President Buchanan and
the Secretary of State, General Cass. The Governor therefore sent
an officer of his staff to Washington to arrange for the meeting,
and to say to the Secretary of State that Mr. Chase "was as earnest
in support of the authority of the federal government, legitimately
exercised, as he was in support of the authority of the state; but
that he should feel compelled to protect the state officials in
the exercise of their duties, and the state courts in the exercise
of their legitimate functions, if it took every man in the state
to do it." In order to adjust the existing differences before they
culminated in open hostility between the two governments, it was
proposed on the part of Mr. Chase that the United States district
attorney at Cincinnati be instructed to drop all suits against
citizens of the state, with the understanding that a similar
course be followed by the state with regard to the marshal and his
deputies. At the formal meeting this was the plan adopted. Thus the
affair was amicably settled, although it did not fail to leave a
deep impression on the public mind, and to evoke comments from the
press indicative of the restiveness of the abolitionists under the
jurisdiction of United States courts in fugitive slave cases.[954]
[954] The _Cincinnati Enquirer_, the leading Democratic paper of
southern Ohio at the time, said of the contention arising out of
the attempted arrest of Addison White: "The designation of the
attorney-general by Governor Chase to aid the lawyer retained
by the sheriff of Clark County, is equivalent to a declaration
of war on the part of Chase and his abolition crew against the
United States Courts. Let war come, the sooner the better."
Quoted in the _Life of Chase_, by J. W. Schuckers, p. 179,
foot-note. Material relating to the Addison White case will be
found in Shuckers, _Life of Chase_, pp. 177-182; Warden, _Life
of Chase_, pp. 350, 351; Beer, _History of Clark County, Ohio_;
the same quoted by Henry Howe in his _Historical Collections of
Ohio_, Vol. I, pp. 384-386. The writer has also had the advantage
of a conversation with Mrs. Amanda Shepherd (the daughter of
Udney Hyde), who was an eye-witness of the attempts to capture
White at her father's house.
Another example of open violation of the Slave Law, which resulted
in conflict between the federal and state courts, exists in the
famous Oberlin-Wellington rescue case. On September 13, 1858, two
slave-catchers, provided with the necessary papers, and accompanied
by the proper officers, arrested a runaway near the town of
Oberlin, in which he had been living for more than two years.
News of the capture was brought to Oberlin by two young men, who
saw the negro in the hands of his captors as they were proceeding
toward Wellington. A large crowd of men, among whom were several
students and a professor of Oberlin College, took the trail of the
slave-catchers, found them at Wellington, and without violence freed
the slave. The arrest of a large number of the rescuers followed,
and their arraignment took place before the United States District
Court at Cleveland. Public sentiment was clearly with the prisoners,
and their counsel were men of high rank in their profession. Two
of the offenders were tried and convicted. On account of the state
of feeling at the time, the legal proceedings were denounced as
political trials. Mass-meetings were held throughout eastern Ohio
to express the sympathy of the people with the rescuers, and to
cast odium on the federal courts. The Dred Scott decision, recently
rendered by the Supreme Court at Washington, called down upon that
tribunal much condemnation. At an immense mass-convention held in
Cleveland, May 24, 1859, resolutions were adopted, which accepted
the compact theory of government voiced in the Virginia and Kentucky
resolutions, declared the equal right of each party to the compact
"to judge for itself, as well of infractions, as of the mode and
measure of redress," and declared the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850
to be void because, "in the opinion of this assembly, passed by
Congress in the exercise of powers improperly assumed."[955] A fund
denominated "the Fund of Liberty" was created, to be applied in
defence of the Oberlin rescuers, and a committee was appointed to
take action for the release of those persons.
[955] J. R. Shipherd, _History of the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue_.
The resolutions appear at pp. 253, 254.
Meanwhile the grand jury of Lorain County--the county in which the
fugitive had been seized--had indicted four of the slave-catchers
under a personal liberty law passed by Ohio in 1857.[956] This
procedure led to negotiations, which finally terminated in a
compromise between the executors and the opponents of the Fugitive
Slave Act. On the one hand the United States authorities agreed
to stop prosecution in the remaining rescue cases, while on the
other hand the Lorain County people consented to dismiss the suits
against the so-called kidnappers. This conclusion of the matter was
regarded as a victory for the "higher law" by the friends of the
Oberlin parties, and the release of the prisoners was heralded in
Cleveland by the firing of a hundred guns. Their return to Oberlin
was signalized by a celebration in their honor. The _Cleveland Plain
Dealer_ said the government had been "beaten at last with law,
justice, and facts all on its side, and Oberlin with its rebellious
Higher Law creed is triumphant."[957]
[956] _Ibid._, pp. 231-235.
[957] The _Plain Dealer_, July 6, 1859, quoted by Shipherd, p.
267.
That these events were not without their political influence is
apparent from the adoption of a resolution at the great Cleveland
convention above mentioned asserting that the chief reliance of
freedom in the United States rested in the Republican party.[958]
It is worthy of note also that this party at its state convention,
held in June, demanded the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act.[959] It
has been already pointed out that some of the counsel of the Oberlin
rescuers early received places of political preferment, partly at
least in consequence of distinction won by them in the defence of
those known to be guilty of violating the law of 1850.[960]
[958] Shipherd, _History of the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue_, pp.
253, 254.
[959] The _Cleveland Herald_, June 3, 1859.
[960] Chapter IX, p. 282.
The enactment of personal liberty laws by various Northern states,
with the purpose of impairing the efficiency of the Fugitive Slave
laws, is characteristic of the period during which the underground
system had its most rapid expansion, namely, the two decades from
1840 to 1860. These laws may be fairly considered as the palpable
but guarded expression of an opposition that was free to go to the
full length in its midnight operation of the Underground Road.
During the period indicated occurred the series of celebrated
fugitive slave cases, beginning with the Latimer case in 1842; and
the precautions, rarely neglected by the friend of the slave, were
often forgotten or spurned in the excitement of the instant or
in the exaltation of wrath. The rigorous character of the law of
1850 acted in two ways north of Mason and Dixon's line: first, it
created a reaction against slavery and brought many recruits into
underground work to aid the rapidly increasing number of escaping
slaves; second, in connection with the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise, it led public sentiment in many states to provide
additional safeguards in the form of personal liberty bills for the
protection of fugitives and their helpers.[961] These bills ran
counter in spirit if not always in letter to legislation that was
held by the United States Supreme Court to be in keeping with the
constitutional clause providing for the recovery of fugitive slaves.
In principle they were, therefore, like the nullification ordinance
of 1832.[962]
[961] Joel Parker, _Personal Liberty Laws and Slavery in the
Territories_, 1861, pp. 10, 11.
[962] J. B. Robinson, _Pictures of Slavery and Anti-Slavery_,
1863, pp. 332, 333; M. G. McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, p.
70; Rhodes, _History of the United States_, Vol. II, p. 74.
Mr. Rhodes says of the personal liberty bills: "They were
dangerously near the nullification of a United States law,
and had not the provocation seemed great, would not have been
adopted by people who had drunk in with approval Webster's idea
of nationality.... While they were undeniably conceived in a
spirit of bad faith towards the South, they were a retaliation
for the grossly bad faith involved in the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise. Nullification cannot be defended, but in a balancing
of the wrongs of the South and the North, it must be averred
that in this case the provocation was vastly greater than the
retaliation."
While the system of the Underground Railroad was thus expanding and
pressing everywhere against legislative restraints, there arose a
man who sought to solve the whole slavery problem in his own rash
way. When John Brown led a company of slaves from Missouri to Canada
despite the attempts to prevent him; and when soon thereafter he
attempted to execute his plan for the general liberation of slaves,
he showed the extreme to which the aid to fugitives might lead.
The influence of Brown's training in Underground Railroad work is
plain in the methods and plans he followed, which have given him
a place in American history. Early convinced that action was the
thing needed to help the bondman, he set himself to find a way
of effecting the destruction of slavery. In devising his scheme
he seems to have considered an underground channel of escape as
a necessary feature of it for those lacking the courage to join
a movement sure to involve them in armed conflict with their
masters. This feature was designated the "Subterranean Pass Way."
The varying character of the testimony in regard to this feature,
as well as the natural change of view that took place in Brown's
mind with the passage of the years, does not permit one to say
definitely what importance was attached by the liberator to the
Pass Way as a part of his plan, but its utility in reducing the
value of slaves must have been apparent to him. That the whole
movement he contemplated would have the effect of making slave
property unstable he showed when speaking of the initiative of the
movement in Virginia. Brown said: "If the slaves could in this way
be driven out of the county, the whole system would be weakened in
that State."[963] In this matter the judgment of the liberator was
not at fault, for it has been estimated that his attack on Harper's
Ferry caused the value of slave property in Virginia to decline to
the extent of $10,000,000.[964] That Brown had the sympathy of a
large number of persons in the North, including some public men, was
a circumstance calculated to make a deeper impression on the minds
of the Southern men generally than this decline in the price of
Virginia slaves.
[963] Hinton, _John Brown and His Men_, pp. 31, 32.
[964] _Ibid._, p. 30.
[Illustration: CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN.
(From a photograph in the possession of the Kansas State Historical
Society.)]
CHAPTER XI
EFFECT OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
The effect of Underground Railroad operations in steadily
withdrawing from the South some of its property and thus causing
constant irritation to slave-owners and slave-traders has already
been commented upon. The persons losing slaves of course regarded
their losses as a personal and undeserved misfortune. Yet,
considering the question broadly from the standpoint of their own
interests, the work of the underground system was a relief to the
masters and to the South. The possibility of a servile insurrection
was a dreadful thing for Southern minds to contemplate; but they
could not easily dismiss the terrible scenes enacted in San Domingo
during the years 1791 to 1793 and the three famous uprisings of
1800, 1820 and 1831, in South Carolina and Virginia. The Underground
Railroad had among its passengers such persons as Josiah Henson, J.
W. Loguen, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, William Wells Brown
and Henry Bibb; it therefore furnished the means of escape for
persons well qualified for leadership among the slaves, and thereby
lessened the danger of an uprising of the blacks against their
masters. The negro historian, Williams, has said of the Underground
Road that it served as a "safety-valve to the institution of
slavery. As soon as leaders arose among the slaves, who refused
to endure the yoke, they would go North. Had they remained, there
must have been enacted at the South the direful scenes of San
Domingo."[965]
[965] _History of the Negro Race in America_, Vol. II, pp. 58, 59.
It is difficult to arrive at any satisfactory idea of the actual
loss sustained by slave-owners through underground channels. The
charges of bad faith against the free states made in Congress by
Southern members were sometimes accompanied by estimates of the
amount of human property lost on account of the indisposition
of those living north of Mason and Dixon's line to meet the
requirements of the fugitive slave legislation. Thus as early as
1822, Moore, of Virginia, speaking in the House in favor of a new
fugitive recovery law, said that the district he represented lost
four or five thousand dollars worth of runaway slaves annually.[966]
In August, 1850, Atchison, of Kentucky, informed the Senate that
"depredations to the amount of hundreds of thousands of dollars are
committed upon the property of the people of the border slave states
of this Union annually."[967] Pratt, of Maryland, said that not
less than $80,000 worth of slaves was lost every year by citizens
of his state.[968] Mason, of Virginia, declared that the losses
of his state were already too heavy to be borne, that they were
increasing from year to year, and were then in excess of $100,000
per year.[969] Butler, of South Carolina, reckoned the annual
loss of the Southern section at $200,000.[970] Clingman, of North
Carolina, said that the thirty thousand fugitives then reported to
be living in the North were worth at current prices little less
than $15,000,000.[971] Claiborne, the biographer of General John A.
Quitman, who was at one time governor of Louisiana, indicated as one
of the defects of the second Fugitive Slave Law its failure to make
"provision for the restitution to the South of the $30,000,000, of
which she had been plundered through the 100,000 slaves abducted
from her in the course of the last forty years" (1810-1850);[972]
and the same writer stated that slavery was rapidly disappearing
from the District of Columbia at the time of the enactment of the
new law, the number of slaves "having been reduced since 1840
from 4,694 to 650, by 'underground railroads' and felonious
abductions."[973]
[966] Benton's _Abridgment of the Debates of Congress_, Vol. VII,
p. 296.
[967] _Congressional Globe_, Thirty-first Congress, First
Session, Appendix, p. 1601.
[968] _Ibid._, p. 1603.
[969] _Ibid._, p. 1605.
[970] Von Holst, _Constitutional and Political History of the
United States_, Vol. III, p. 552.
[971] _Congressional Globe_, Thirty-first Congress, First
Session, p. 202. See also Von Holst's work, Vol. III, p. 552,
foot-note.
[972] J. F. H. Claiborne, _Life and Correspondence of John A.
Quitman_, Vol. II, p. 28.
[973] J. F. H. Claiborne, _Life and Correspondence of John A.
Quitman_, Vol. II, p. 30. His figures are, of course, not correct.
The wide divergences among the estimates here given, as well as
the obvious difficulty of getting reliable information in regard
to the number of runaway slaves, renders these figures of little
use in determining the loss of human property by the slaveholding
states. Nevertheless, the estimates are valuable in illustrating
the character of the complaints that were made in Congress, and
in enabling one to realize that the tenure of slave property in
the border states was rendered precarious by the operations of
the Underground Railroad. Can it be thought strange that the
disappearance week by week and month by month of valuable slaves
over the unknown routes of the underground system should have
produced wrath, suspicion and hostility in the minds of people who
could justly claim to have a constitutional guarantee, the laws of
Congress, and the decisions of the highest courts on their side?
In the compendiums of the United States Census for 1850 and 1860
are some statistics on fugitive slaves, which fall far short of the
most moderate estimates of the Southerners, and flatly disagree
with the testimony gathered from all other quarters. The official
reports appear to show that the number of slaves escaping from their
masters was small and inconsiderable, that it rapidly decreased, and
that it was independent of proximity to a free population. But the
censuses are not only opposed to the evidence, they are on their
face inadequate.
If, as those tables indicate, only 1,011 slaves escaped from their
masters in 1850, and only 803 in 1860, and in the latter year only
500 escaped from the border slave states, then it becomes impossible
to understand the emphasis laid by Southern men upon the value of
their runaway slaves, the steady pressure made by the border states
for a more stringent law that resulted in the Fugitive Slave Act
of 1850, and the allegation of bad faith on the part of the North
put forth by the Southern states as a reason for secession.[974]
In considering the weight to be ascribed to the figures on fugitive
slaves supplied by the census compendiums, it is proper to set
over against them the showing afforded by the same compendiums
relative to the decline of the slave population in the border slave
states during the decade 1850-1860; for it is to be noted that the
compendiums show a marked decline in these states, that they show
a greater percentage of decline in the northernmost counties of
these states than in the states as a whole, and, what is even more
remarkable, that the loss appears to have been still greater during
this time in the four "pan-handle" counties of Virginia than in any
of the other states referred to, or in the border counties of any
one of them.[975] It can scarcely be suggested that the relatively
rapid decline of the slave population in the border counties was due
to larger shipments of slaves to the far South from these marginal
regions without at the same time suggesting that the explanation
for such shipments lay in the proximity of a free population and
the numerous lines of Underground Railroad maintained by it. The
concurrence of evidence from sources other than the census reports,
and the agreement therewith of part of the evidence gathered from
these reports themselves, constrains one to say that those who
compiled the statistics on fugitive slaves did not secure the facts
in full; and that the complaints of large losses sustained by
slave-owners through the befriending of fugitive slaves by Northern
people, frequently made by Southern representatives in Congress and
by the South generally, were not without sufficient foundation.
[974] Census of 1860, pp. 11, 12. See Table A, Appendix C, p. 378.
[975] See Tables B and C, Appendix C, p. 379.
It is natural that there should be great variation among the guesses
made as to the total number of those indebted for liberty to the
Underground Road. Very few of the persons that harbored runaways
were so indiscreet as to keep a register of their hunted visitors.
Their hospitality was equal to all possible demands, but was kept
strictly secret. Under these circumstances one should handle all
numerical generalizations with caution.
[Illustration: RECORD OF FUGITIVES AIDED DURING FIVE MONTHS.]
[Illustration: KEPT BY DANIEL OSBORN, OF ALUM CREEK SETTLEMENT,
OHIO.]
By rare good fortune the writer has found a single leaf of a diary
kept by Daniel Osborn, a Friend or Quaker, of Alum Creek Settlement,
Delaware County, Ohio, which gives a record of the blacks passing
through that neighborhood during an interval of five months, from
April 14 to September 10, 1844. The accompanying facsimiles,
which reproduce the two sides of the leaf, show that the number
is forty-seven. The year in which this memorandum was made may be
fairly taken as an average year, and the line on which this Quaker
settlement was a station as a representative underground route in
Ohio. Now, along Ohio's southern boundary there were the initial
stations of at least twelve important lines of travel, some of which
were certainly in operation before 1830. Let us consider, as we may
properly, that the period of operation continued from 1830 to 1860.
Taking these as the elements for a computation, one may reckon that
Ohio may have aided not less than 40,000 fugitives in the thirty
years included in our reckoning.[976] That the number of refugees
after 1844 did not decrease is indicated by the statement that
during one month in the year of 1854-1855 sixty were harbored by one
member of the Alum Creek Settlement. It is to be remembered that
several families of the settlement were engaged in this work.[977]
[976] This computation was first printed by the writer in the
_American Historical Review_, April, 1896, pp. 462, 463.
[977] Conversation with M. J. Benedict, L. A. Benedict and
others, Alum Creek Settlement, Ohio, Dec. 2, 1893.
An illustration of underground activity in the East may be ventured.
Mr. Robert Purvis, of Philadelphia, states that he kept a record
of the fugitives that passed through the hands of the Vigilance
Committee of Philadelphia for a long period, till the trepidation
of his family after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill in 1850
caused him to destroy it. His record book showed, he says, an
average of one a day sent northward. In other words, between 1830
and 1860 over 9,000 runaways were aided in Philadelphia. But we
know that the Vigilance Committee did not begin this sort of work
in the Quaker City, and that underground activities there date back
at least to the time of Isaac T. Hopper's earliest efforts, that
is, 1800 and before. We also know that there were many centres
round about Philadelphia, some of whose work was certainly done
independently of that place.
That the resources of some of the operators in centres in the West
were being drained almost to exhaustion by the demands of the heavy
traffic towards the close of the underground period, distinctly
appears in the following letter from Col. J. Bowles, of Lawrence,
Kansas, to Mr. F. B. Sanborn:--
LAWRENCE _April 4th 1859_
MR. F. B. SANBOURN
Dear Sir at the suggestion of friend Judge Conway I address you
these few hastily written lines. I see I am expected to give
you some information as to the present condition of the _U. G.
R. R._ in Kansas or more particularly at the Lawrence depot. In
order that you may fully understand the present condition of
affairs I shall ask your permission to relate a small bit of the
early history of this, the only _paying_, R. R. in Kansas.
Lawrence has been (from the first settlement of Kansas) known
and cursed by all slave holders in and out of Mo. for being
an abolition town. Missourians have a peculiar faculty for
embracing every opportunity to denounce, curse, and _blow_
every thing they dislike. This peculiar faculty of theirs gave
Lawrence great notoriety in _Mo._ especially among the negroes
to whom the principal part of their denunciations were directed
and on whom they were intended to have great effect. I have
learned from negroes who were _emigrating_ from _Mo._ that they
never would have known anything about a land of freedom or
that they had a friend in the world only from their master's
continual abuse of the Lawrence abolits. Slaves are usually very
cunning and believe about as much as they please of what the
master is telling him (thoug of course he must affect to believe
every word) knowing it is to the master's interest to keep him
ignorant of every thing that would make him likely or even wish
to be free.
One old fellow said "when he started to come to Lawrence he
didn't know if all de peoples in disha town war debbils as ole
massa had said or not, but dis he did know if he could get dar
safe old massa was fraid to come arter him, and if dey all
should prove to be bad as ole massa had said he could lib wid
dem bout as well as at home." Some few of them were unavoidably
taken back to Mo. after leaving here for Iowa. Many of them
found an opportunity to make their escape and bring others with
them and none ever failed to be a successful missionary in the
cause, telling every one he had a chance to converse with of
the land of freedom, and the friends he found in Lawrence. One
man I know well who has been captured twice and was shot each
time in resisting his captors (one of whom he killed) told me
that he was confident he had assisted in the escape of no less
than twenty five of his fellow beings, and that he had also
given information or sown the seed that would make a hundred
more free men. He is now with some others in or about Canada.
The last and successful escape was made from western Texas
where he was sent for safe keeping. You can see from the above
why L---- has had more than would seem to be her share of this
good work to do. At first our means were limited and of course
could not do much but then we were not so extensively known or
patronized. As our means increased we found a corresponding
increase in opportunity for doing good to the white man as well
as the black. Kansas has been preëminently a land of charity.
The friends in the East have helped such objects liberally yet
Kansas has had much to do for herself in that line. To give you
an idea of what has been done by the people of this place in
U. G. R. R. I'll make a statement of the number of fugitives
who have found assistance here. In the last four years I am
personally known to [cognizant of] the fact of nearly three
hundred fugitives having passed through and received assistance
from the abolitionists here at Lawrence. Thus you see we have
been continually strained to meet the heavy demands that were
almost daily made upon us to carry on this (not very) _gradual
emancipation_. I usually have assisted in collecting or begging
money for the needy of either class. Many of the most zealous
in the cause of humanity complained (as they had good cause to)
that this heavy (and continually increasing) tax was interfering
with their business to such a degree that they could not stand
it longer and that other provisions must be made by which they
would be relieved of a portion of a burden they had long bourn.
This was about the state of affairs last Christmas when as you
are aware the slaves have a few days holiday. Many of them chose
this occasion to make a visit to Lawrence and during the week
some twenty four came to our town, five or six of the number
brought means to assist them on their journey. These were sent
on, but the remainder must be kept until money could be raised
to send them on. $150 was the am't necessary to send them to
a place of safety. Under the circumstances it necessarily took
some time to raise that am't, and a great many persons had to be
applied to. It was not enough that the sympathies and love for
the cause of humanity was appealed to in order to raise money,
many had to be argued with and shown that the cause was actually
in a suffering condition and the fugitives were then in town
and the number must also be made known in order that the person
might give liberally. Lawrence like most all towns has her bad
men pimps and worst of all a few democrats, all of whom will do
_anything_ for money. Somewhere in the ranks of the intimate
friends to the cause these traitors to God and humanity found a
judas who for thirty pieces of silver did betray our cause. This
was not suspected until after the capture of Dr Day.... Every
thing goes to prove that the capture of Day's party was the work
of a traitor who though suspected has not yet been fairly tried
and _dealt_ with as will be done as soon as Day is bailed out
which will be done [in] a few days.
* * * * *
We would like ... that you plead our cause with those of our
friends who are disposed to censure us and convince them we are
still worthy and in great need of their respect and coöperation.
I am sorry to say (but tis true) that many of the most zealous
in the cause of humanity have become somewhat discouraged by
the hard times and the lamentable capture of Day and party and
cannot be induced to take hold of it and lend a willing hand.
Never the less the work has went slowly but surely on, until
very recently. Those who have persevered like many others, have
found _their_ bottom dollar also of the money so generously
contributed by persons of your notable society. This is partialy
owing to heavy expenses of the trial of Dr Day and son which has
been principally borne by the society here and has amounted to
near $300. Now seems to be our dark day and we are casting about
to see what can be done. We have some eight or ten fugitives
now on hand who cannot be sent off until we get an addition
to our financial department. This statement of facts has been
made with a full knowledge of the many calls that is made upon
your generosity in that quarter. Nothing shall be urged as an
alternative for we feel confident the case here presented will
meet with merited assistance sympathy or advice, as you may deem
best. One word of old Brown and his movement in the emancipation
cause, and I will have done. I understand from some parties who
have been corresponding with some persons in Boston and other
places in behalf of our cause that we could and would receive
material aid only they are holding themselves in readiness to
assist Brown. Such men I honor and they show themselves worthy
the highest regard yet I assure them they do not understand
Brown's plans for carrying out his cause. I have known Brown
nearly four years, he is a bold cool calculating and far seeing
man who is as consciencious as he is smart. He "knows the right
and dare maintain it." I have talked confidentially with him
on the subject. I know he expressed himself in this way as to
the effects that he intended to make the master pay the way of
the slave to the land of freedom. That is he intended to take
property enough with the slaves to pay all expenses. So you see
there is not fear of a large demand from that quarter. By no
means would I be understood as counciling not to assist him. No
indeed if I counciled at all it would be to this effect, render
him all the assistance he ever asks for he is worthy and his
cause is a good one. _Others_ would have been with him only they
had all they could do in another quarter. I feel myself highly
honored to be placed where I can with propriety communicate
with a society whom I have only known to admire. Hoping what I
have written (disconnectedly and badly written as it is) may
be acceptable and that I may hear from you soon. I am very
respectfully Your obedient servant
J. BOWLES
Lawrence
F. B. SANBOURN
Concord.
The success of the Underground Road in transporting negroes beyond
the limits of the Southern states was long ago commented upon as
standing in marked contrast with that of the American Colonization
Society. This association was organized in 1816, and soon had
auxiliary societies in most of the states. Its object was to remove
the free blacks and such as might be made free from the South, and
colonize them on the coast of Africa. By 1857, after an existence
of forty years, the Colonization Society had sent to Africa 9,502
emigrants, of whom 3,676 were free-born, 326 self-purchased, and
5,500 emancipated on condition of being transported. That the
informal method of the abolitionists was many times as efficient as
that adopted by the organization mentioned, with its treasury and
its board of officers, cannot be denied.[978]
[978] E. M. Pettit, _Sketches in the History of the Underground
Railroad_, Introduction, p. xi. Wilson gives an account of the
American Colonization Society in his _Rise and Fall of the Slave
Power_, Vol. I, pp. 208-222; see also the _Life of Garrison_, by
his children, Index.
By actual count it is found that the number of persons within the
limits of Ohio named as underground workers in the collections upon
which this book is based, is about 1,540; in all other states taken
together the number found is 1,670. It is proper to observe that
these figures are minimum figures. Death and infirmity, as well as
removal, have carried many unknown operators beyond the chance of
discovery.
It is not surprising that the secret enterprises of this determined
class of people--so effectual as to make rare the pursuit of
a fugitive during the last years of the decade preceding the
War[979]--should have become the ground of an important charge
against the North in the crisis of 1860. The violation of the
Fugitive Slave Law was an accusation upon which Southern members of
Congress rang all the changes in the course of the violent debates
of the sessions of 1860-1861. Thus Jones, of Georgia, said in the
House in April, 1860: "It is a notorious fact that in a good many
of the non-slaveholding states the Republican party have regularly
organized societies--underground railroads--for the avowed purpose
of stealing the slaves from the border States, and carrying them
off to a free State or to Canada. These predatory bands are kept
up by private and public subscriptions among the Abolitionists;
and in many of the States, I am sorry to say, they receive the
sanction and protection of the law. The border States lose annually
thousands and millions of dollars' worth of property by this
system of larceny that has been carried on for years." Polk, of
Missouri, whose state had suffered not a little through the flight
and abduction of slaves, made the same complaint in the Senate in
January, 1861: "Underground railroads are established," said he,
"stretching from the remotest slaveholding States clear up to
Canada. Secret agencies are put to work in the very midst of our
slaveholding communities to steal away slaves. The constitutional
obligation for the rendition of the fugitive from service is
violated. The laws of Congress enacted to carry this provision of
the Constitution into effect are not executed. Their execution is
prevented. Prevented, first, by hostile and unconstitutional state
legislation. Secondly, by a vitiated public sentiment. Thirdly, by
the concealing of the slave, so that the United States law cannot
be made to reach him. And when the runaway is arrested under the
fugitive slave law--which, however, is seldom the case--he is very
often rescued.... This lawlessness is felt with special seriousness
in the border slave States. The underground railroads start mostly
from these States. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are lost
annually. And no State loses more heavily than my own. Kentucky, it
is estimated, loses annually as much as $200,000. The other border
States no doubt lose in the same ratio, Missouri much more. But all
these losses and outrages, all this disregard of constitutional
obligation and social duty, are as nothing in their bearing upon the
Union in comparison with the animus, the intent and purpose of which
they are at once the fruit and the evidence...."[980] Of this animus
the election of Lincoln was regarded as the crowning proof; and it
became, as is well known, the signal for secession.
[979] McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, p. 71.
[980] _Congressional Globe_, Thirty-sixth Congress, Second
Session, p. 356; see also _ibid._, Appendix, p. 197.
In December, 1860, the very month in which South Carolina chose to
withdraw from the Union, the arrest of a runaway negro in Canada
gave rise to an extradition case that became an additional cause
of excitement. The negro was William Anderson, who in 1853 had
been caught without a pass in Missouri, and had killed the man
that tried to capture him. In 1860 he was recognized in Canada
by a slave-catcher from Missouri, was arrested on the charge of
murder, and thrown into jail at Toronto. As the Ashburton treaty
contained an article providing for the extradition of slaves guilty
of crimes committed in the United States, the American government
sought to secure the surrender of Anderson for punishment. Lord
Elgin, Governor-General of Canada at the time, was appealed to
in the fugitive's behalf by Mrs. Laura S. Haviland. He made a
spirited reply to the effect that "in case of a demand for William
Anderson, he should require the case to be tried in their British
court; and if twelve freeholders should testify that he had been
a man of integrity since his arrival in their dominion, it should
clear him." Nevertheless, the case was twice decided against the
defendant, first by the common magistrate's court, then by the Court
of Error and Appeal, to which it had been carried on a writ of
habeas corpus. But this did not end the matter. Through the efforts
of the fugitive's friends application was made for a writ of habeas
corpus to the English Court of the Queen's Bench, and the writ was
granted. Anderson was defended by Gerrit Smith, whose eloquent
speech produced a profound impression in Canada, and did not fail to
attract considerable notice in all parts of the United States.[981]
[981] Accounts of Anderson's case will be found in a collection
of pamphlets in the Boston Public Library; in the _Liberator_,
Dec. 3, 1860 and Jan. 22, 1861; in _A Woman's Life Work_, by
Laura S. Haviland, pp. 207, 208; in the _History of Canada_, by
J. M. McMullen, Vol. II, p. 259; in the _History of Canada_,
by John MacMullen, p. 553; and in _Fugitive Slaves_, by M. G.
McDougall, pp. 25, 26.
During the month of December, in which the Anderson case came
into prominence, the example of secession set by South Carolina
was followed by five other cotton states. Meantime Congress was
giving unmistakable evidence of the importance attaching to the
fugitive slave question. In his message of December 4, President
Buchanan gave serious consideration to this question, although he
insisted that the Fugitive Slave Law had been duly enforced in every
contested case during his administration.[982] He recommended an
"explanatory amendment" to the Constitution affording "recognition
of the right of the master to have his slave who has escaped from
one state to another restored and 'delivered up' to him, and of
the validity of the Fugitive Slave Law enacted for this purpose,
together with a declaration that all State laws impairing or
defeating this right, are violations of the Constitution, and
are consequently null and void."[983] On December 12 not less
than eleven resolutions were introduced into the House on this
subject, and on December 13, 18 and 24 other resolutions followed.
Resolutions of a similar nature continued to be presented in both
Houses during January and February of the succeeding year, ceasing
only with the end of the session.[984]
[982] _Journal of the Senate_, Thirty-sixth Congress, Second
Session, p. 10.
[983] _Journal of the Senate_, Thirty-sixth Congress, Second
Session, p. 18.
[984] For a complete list of these resolutions see Mrs.
McDougall's monograph on _Fugitive Slaves_, Appendix, pp. 117-119.
These efforts on the part of the national legislature to appease the
spirit of secession in the South were paralleled by efforts equally
futile on the part of various Northern state legislatures during
the same period. It was reported that towards the close of the year
1860 a caucus of governors of seven Republican states was held in
New York City, and decided to recommend to their legislatures "the
unconditional and early repeal of the personal liberty bills passed
by their respective states." As a matter of fact this recommendation
was made by the Republican governors of four states, Maine,
Massachusetts, New York and Illinois, and the Democratic governors
of Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. Rhode Island repealed her
personal liberty law in January, 1861; Massachusetts modified hers
in March; and was followed by Vermont, which took similar action
in April. Ohio had repealed her act in 1858, but her legislature
seized this opportunity to urge her sister states to cancel any of
their statutes "conflicting with or rendering less efficient the
Constitution or the laws."[985] The conciliation of the South was
clearly the purpose of these measures, but action came too late, for
confidence between the sections had already been destroyed.
[985] Rhodes, _History of the United States_, Vol. III, pp. 252,
253.
The fact that the border slave states, with the exception of
Virginia, remained in the Union, must not be interpreted as
indicating small losses of human property by these states. The
strong ties existing between the states lying on either side of
the sectional line, the presence of a rigorous Union sentiment in
Kentucky, western Virginia and the slaveholding regions lying east
and west of these, together with the hope of a new compromise
entertained by these states, tended to keep them in their places
in the Union. The prospect of a stampede of slaves, in case they
should join the secession movement, was a consideration that may
be supposed to have had some weight in fixing the decision of
the border slave states. Certainly it was one to which Northern
men attached considerable importance at the time in explaining
the steadfast position of these states; and the impossibility of
recovering even a single fugitive from the free states in case of a
disruption of the Union along Mason and Dixon's line was a thing of
which Southern members of the national House were duly reminded by
their Northern colleagues.
The retention of the loyalty of the border slave states was a
matter of grave concern to President Lincoln, who sought first of
all the preservation of the Union. In his inaugural address Lincoln
had declared his purpose to see to it that the Fugitive Slave Law
was executed, and when a few months later an opportunity presented
itself he kept his promise. Congress also realized the need of
caution on account of the border states, and moved slowly in framing
general enactments. The changed conditions surrounding the slaves,
due to the marshalling of forces for the War and the advance of
Northern troops into the enemy's country, multiplied the chances
for escape throughout the South, and removed the necessity for a
long and perilous journey by the slaves to find friends. Negroes
from the plantations of both loyal and disloyal masters flocked to
the camps of Union soldiers, and could not be separated. Under such
circumstances the need of uniformity of method in dealing with cases
early became apparent. The War had scarcely more than commenced
when protests began to be made against the employment of Northern
troops as slave-catchers. A letter read in the Senate by Mr. Sumner,
in December, 1861, made inquiry, "Shall our sons, who are offering
their lives for the preservation of our institutions, be degraded
to slave-catchers for any persons, loyal or disloyal? If such is
the policy of the government, I shall urge my son to shed no more
blood for its preservation."[986] Two German companies in one of the
Massachusetts regiments also entered protest, making it a condition
of their enlistment that they should not be required to perform such
discreditable service. "They complained, and with them the German
population generally throughout the country."[987] The inexpediency
of the return of fugitives by the army was recognized by Congress
in the early part of 1862, and a bill forbidding officers from
restoring them under any consideration was signed by the President
on May 14, 1862.[988]
[986] _Congressional Globe_, Thirty-seventh Congress, First
Session, p. 30.
[987] _Congressional Globe_, Thirty-seventh Congress, First
Session, p. 30; see also M. G. McDougall's _Fugitive Slaves_, p.
79.
[988] _House Journal_, Thirty-seventh Congress, Second Session,
p. 265; _Senate Journal_, Thirty-seventh Congress, Second
Session, p. 285; _Congressional Globe_, Thirty-seventh Congress,
Second Session, p. 1243.
The various acts of Congress and the President relative to fugitive
slaves down to the Proclamation of Emancipation, practically
circumscribed the legal effect of the Fugitive Slave laws to the
border states, for in the free states the laws had not been observed
for a long time. It was not until June, 1864, that these measures
were swept from the statute-book of the nation, notwithstanding the
insistence of Kentucky and the other loyal states of the South that
a constitutional obligation rested upon the government to retain
them. The repeal act did not remove this obligation. Such a result
could come only with the extinction of slavery, and the last vestige
of slavery did not disappear until the adoption of the Thirteenth
Amendment to the Constitution in 1865. The Amendment provides:
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment
for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall
exist within the United States or any place subject to their
jurisdiction."
The general significance of the long controversy in regard to
fugitive slaves can best be understood by tracing the development
as a sectional issue of the question at the bottom of it, namely,
the obligation to restore fugitives to their masters. The creation
of a line dividing the free North from the slaveholding South in
the early years of our national history, and the enactment of the
first Fugitive Slave Law, by which the general government assumed
a certain responsibility for runaways, led to the opening of the
question. From that time on, the steadily increasing number of
escapes, together with the spread of the underground system,
which made these escapes almost uniformly successful, kept the
question open. Operations along the secret lines constantly caused
aggravation in the South; and the pursuit of passengers, mobs and
violence were results widely witnessed in the North. The other
questions between the sections were subject to compromise, but party
action could not control the workings of the Underground Railroad.
The stirring sights and affecting stories with which the North
became acquainted through the stealthy migration of slaves were well
adapted to make abolitionists rapidly, and the consequence was more
aggravation on both sides. The practice of midnight emancipation
in Northern states during the early years was accompanied, not
unnaturally, with the formulation and statement of the principle
of immediatism in neighborhoods where underground methods were
familiar. Thus the way was prepared for Garrison and his talented
coworkers, whose eloquent tongues and pens could no more be
controlled by pro-slavery forces than could the Underground Railroad
itself. Agitation reacted upon the Road and increased its activity;
this caused counter agitation by Southerners in and out of Congress
until a more rigorous Fugitive Slave Law was secured.
The Compromise of 1850 failed to reconcile the sections: Northern
men despised the Fugitive Slave Law, and displayed greater zeal than
ever before in aiding runaway slaves. Thus, in the later stages
of the controversy, as from its beginning, the fugitive was a
successful missionary in the cause of freedom. Personal liberty laws
were passed by the free states to defend him; _Uncle Tom's Cabin_
was written to portray to the world his aspirations for liberty and
his endeavors to secure it; John Brown devised a "subterranean pass
way" to assist him, as a part of the great scheme of liberation that
failed at Harper's Ferry. One of the chief reasons for withdrawing
from the Union assigned by the seceding states was the bad faith
of the North in refusing to surrender fugitives. At the outbreak
of the Civil War large numbers of slaves sought refuge with the
Union forces, the government soon found it impracticable to restore
them, and disavowed all responsibility for them in 1862. By the
Proclamation of Emancipation slavery was abolished within the area
of the disloyal states, and the controversy became merely formal,
the loyal slave states striving to maintain an abstract right based
by them upon the Constitution. In 1864, however, they were forced
to yield, and the fugitive slave legislation was repealed. The year
following witnessed the cancellation of the fugitive slave clause in
the Constitution by the amendment of that instrument. In view of all
this it is safe to say that the Underground Railroad was one of the
greatest forces which brought on the Civil War, and thus destroyed
slavery.
APPENDIX A
CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISIONS AND NATIONAL ACTS RELATIVE TO FUGITIVE
SLAVES, 1787-1850
Fugitive Clause in Northwest Ordinance of 1787. [Chapter II, p. 20.]
=1787, July 13.= Art. VI. "There shall be neither slavery nor
involuntary servitude in the said Territory, otherwise than in
the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted; _provided_, always, that any person escaping into the
same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one
of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed
and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service
aforesaid." Read first time, July 11, 1787. Passed July 13,
1787.--_Journals of Congress_, XII, 84, 92.
Fugitive Clause in the Constitution. [Chapter II, p. 20.]
=1787, Sept. 13.= Art. IV, § 2. "No person held to service or labor
in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall,
in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from
such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the
party to whom such service or labor may be due."--_Revised Statutes
of the United States_, I, 18.
First Fugitive Slave Act. [Chapter II, p. 21.]
=1793, Feb. 12.= _An Act respecting fugitives from justice and
persons escaping from the service of their masters._
"SECTION 1. _Be it enacted by the Senate and House of
Representatives of the United States of America in Congress
assembled_, That whenever the executive authority of any state in
the Union, or of either of the territories northwest or south of the
river Ohio, shall demand any person as a fugitive from justice, of
the executive authority of any such state or territory to which such
person shall have fled, and shall moreover produce the copy of an
indictment found, or an affidavit made before a magistrate of any
state or territory as aforesaid, charging the person so demanded,
with having committed treason, felony or other crime, certified
as authentic by the governor or chief magistrate of the state or
territory from whence the person so charged fled, it shall be the
duty of the executive authority of the state or territory to which
such person shall have fled, to cause him or her to be arrested
and secured, and notice of the arrest to be given to the executive
authority making such demand, or to the agent of such authority
appointed to receive the fugitive, and to cause the fugitive to be
delivered to such agent when he shall appear: But if no such agent
shall appear within six months from the time of the arrest, the
prisoner may be discharged. And all costs or expenses incurred in
the apprehending, securing, and transmitting such fugitive to the
state or territory making such demand, shall be paid by such state
or territory.
"SEC. 2. _And be it further enacted_, That any agent, appointed as
aforesaid, who shall receive the fugitive into his custody, shall
be empowered to transport him or her to the state or territory from
which he or she shall have fled. And if any person or persons shall
by force set at liberty, or rescue the fugitive from such agent
while transporting, as aforesaid, the person or persons so offending
shall, on conviction, be fined not exceeding five hundred dollars,
and be imprisoned not exceeding one year.
"SEC. 3. _And be it also enacted_, That when a person held to labour
in any of the United States, or in either of the territories on the
northwest or south of the river Ohio, under the laws thereof, shall
escape into any other of the said states or territory, the person
to whom such labour or service may be due, his agent or attorney,
is hereby empowered to seize or arrest such fugitive from labour,
and to take him or her before any judge of the circuit or district
courts of the United States, residing or being within the state,
or before any magistrate of a county, city or town corporate,
wherein such seizure or arrest shall be made, and upon proof to the
satisfaction of such judge or magistrate, either by oral testimony
or affidavit taken before and certified by a magistrate of any such
state or territory, that the person so seized or arrested, doth,
under the laws of the state or territory from which he or she fled,
owe service or labour to the person claiming him or her, it shall be
the duty of such judge or magistrate to give a certificate thereof
to such claimant, his agent or attorney, which shall be sufficient
warrant for removing the said fugitive from labour, to the state or
territory from which he or she fled.
"SEC. 4. _And be it further enacted_, That any person who shall
knowingly and willingly obstruct or hinder such claimant, his agent
or attorney, in so seizing or arresting such fugitive from labour,
or shall rescue such fugitive from such claimant, his agent or
attorney, when so arrested pursuant to the authority herein given
or declared; or shall harbour or conceal such person after notice
that he or she was a fugitive from labour, as aforesaid, shall, for
either of the said offences, forfeit and pay the sum of five hundred
dollars. Which penalty may be recovered by and for the benefit of
such claimant, by action of debt, in any court proper to try the
same; saving moreover to the person claiming such labour or service,
his right of action for or on account of the said injuries or either
of them."--_Statutes at Large_, I, 302-305.
Fugitive Slave Clause in the Missouri Compromise. [Chapter
X, p. 298.]
=1820, March 19.= The Missouri Compromise provided "that any
persons escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is
lawfully claimed in any State or Territory of the United States,
such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed, and conveyed to the person
claiming his or her labor, or service, as aforesaid."--_Annals of
Congress, 16 Cong. 1 Sess._, 1469, 1587.
Second Fugitive Slave Act. [Chapter II, p. 22.]
=1850, Sept. 18.= "_An Act to amend, and supplementary to, the Act
entitled 'An Act respecting Fugitives from Justice, and Persons
escaping from the Service of their Masters,' approved February
twelfth, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three._
"_Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled_, That the persons
who have been, or may hereafter be, appointed commissioners, in
virtue of any act of Congress, by the Circuit Courts of the United
States, and who, in consequence of such appointment, are authorized
to exercise the powers that any justice of the peace, or other
magistrate of any of the United States, may exercise in respect to
offenders for any crime or offence against the United States, by
arresting, imprisoning, or bailing the same under and by virtue
of the thirty-third section of the act of the twenty-fourth of
September, seventeen hundred and eighty-nine, entitled 'An Act to
establish the judicial courts of the United States,' shall be, and
are hereby, authorized and required to exercise and discharge all
the powers and duties conferred by this act.
"SEC. 2. _And be it further enacted_, That the Superior Court of
each organized Territory of the United States shall have the same
power to appoint commissioners to take acknowledgments of bail and
affidavits, and to take depositions of witnesses in civil causes,
which is now possessed by the Circuit Court of the United States;
and all commissioners who shall hereafter be appointed for such
purposes by the Superior Court of any organized Territory of the
United States, shall possess all the powers, and exercise all the
duties, conferred by law upon the commissioners appointed by the
Circuit Courts of the United States for similar purposes, and shall
moreover exercise and discharge all the powers and duties conferred
by this act.
"SEC. 3. _And be it further enacted_, That the Circuit Courts of the
United States, and the Superior Courts of each organized Territory
of the United States, shall from time to time enlarge the number
of commissioners, with a view to afford reasonable facilities to
reclaim fugitives from labor, and to the prompt discharge of the
duties imposed by this act.
"SEC. 4. _And be it further enacted_, That the commissioners
above named shall have concurrent jurisdiction with the judges of
the Circuit and District Courts of the United States, in their
respective circuits and districts within the several States, and
the judges of the Superior Courts of the Territories, severally
and collectively, in term-time and vacation; and shall grant
certificates to such claimants, upon satisfactory proof being made,
with authority to take and remove such fugitives from service or
labor, under the restrictions herein contained, to the State or
Territory from which such persons may have escaped or fled.
"SEC. 5. _And be it further enacted_, That it shall be the duty of
all marshals and deputy marshals to obey and execute all warrants
and precepts issued under the provisions of this act, when to them
directed; and should any marshal or deputy marshal refuse to receive
such warrant, or other process, when tendered, or to use all proper
means diligently to execute the same, he shall, on conviction
thereof, be fined in the sum of one thousand dollars, to the use
of such claimant, on the motion of such claimant by the Circuit or
District Court for the district of such marshal; and after arrest
of such fugitive, by such marshal or his deputy, or whilst at
any time in his custody under the provisions of this act, should
such fugitive escape, whether with or without the assent of such
marshal or his deputy, such marshal shall be liable, on his official
bond, to be prosecuted for the benefit of such claimant, for the
full value of the service or labor of said fugitive in the State,
Territory, or District whence he escaped: and the better to enable
the said commissioners, when thus appointed, to execute their duties
faithfully and efficiently, in conformity with the requirements of
the Constitution of the United States and of this act, they are
hereby authorized and empowered, within their counties respectively,
to appoint, in writing under their hands, any one or more suitable
persons, from time to time, to execute all such warrants and other
process as may be issued by them in the lawful performance of their
respective duties; with authority to such commissioners, or the
persons to be appointed by them, to execute process as aforesaid, to
summon and call to their aid the bystanders, or _posse comitatus_ of
the proper county, when necessary to insure a faithful observance of
the clause of the Constitution referred to, in conformity with the
provisions of this act; and all good citizens are hereby commanded
to aid and assist in the prompt and efficient execution of this
law, whenever their services may be required, as aforesaid, for
that purpose; and said warrants shall run, and be executed by said
officers, anywhere in the State within which they are issued.
"SEC. 6. _And be it further enacted_, That when a person held to
service or labor in any State or Territory of the United States, has
heretofore or shall hereafter escape into another State or Territory
of the United States, the person or persons to whom such service
or labor may be due, or his, her, or their agent or attorney, duly
authorized, by power of attorney, in writing, acknowledged and
certified under the seal of some legal officer or court of the
State or Territory in which the same may be executed, may pursue
and reclaim such fugitive person, either by procuring a warrant
from some one of the courts, judges, or commissioners aforesaid, of
the proper circuit, district, or county, for the apprehension of
such fugitive from service or labor, or by seizing and arresting
such fugitive, where the same can be done without process, and
by taking, or causing such person to be taken, forthwith before
such court, judge, or commissioner, whose duty it shall be to hear
and determine the case of such claimant in a summary manner; and
upon satisfactory proof being made, by deposition or affidavit,
in writing, to be taken and certified by such court, judge, or
commissioner, or by other satisfactory testimony, duly taken and
certified by some court, magistrate, justice of the peace, or other
legal officer authorized to administer an oath and take depositions
under the laws of the State or Territory from which such person
owing service or labor may have escaped, with a certificate of
such magistracy or other authority, as aforesaid, with the seal of
the proper court or officer thereto attached, which seal shall be
sufficient to establish the competency of the proof, and with proof,
also by affidavit, of the identity of the person whose service or
labor is claimed to be due as aforesaid, that the person so arrested
does in fact owe service or labor to the person or persons claiming
him or her, in the State or Territory from which such fugitive may
have escaped as aforesaid, and that said person escaped, to make
out and deliver to such claimant, his or her agent or attorney, a
certificate setting forth the substantial facts as to the service
or labor due from such fugitive to the claimant, and of his or her
escape from the State or Territory in which such service or labor
was due, to the State or Territory in which he or she was arrested,
with authority to such claimant, or his or her agent or attorney, to
use such reasonable force and restraint as may be necessary, under
the circumstances of the case, to take and remove such fugitive
person back to the State or Territory whence he or she may have
escaped as aforesaid. In no trial or hearing under this act shall
the testimony of such alleged fugitive be admitted in evidence; and
the certificates in this and the first [fourth] section mentioned,
shall be conclusive of the right of the person or persons in whose
favor granted, to remove such fugitive to the State or Territory
from which he escaped, and shall prevent all molestation of such
person or persons by any process issued by any court, judge,
magistrate, or other person whomsoever.
"SEC. 7. _And be it further enacted_, That any person who shall
knowingly and willingly obstruct, hinder, or prevent such claimant,
his agent or attorney, or any person or persons lawfully assisting
him, her, or them, from arresting such a fugitive from service
or labor, either with or without process as aforesaid, or shall
rescue, or attempt to rescue, such fugitive from service or labor,
from the custody of such claimant, his or her agent or attorney,
or other person or persons lawfully assisting as aforesaid, when
so arrested, pursuant to the authority herein given and declared;
or shall aid, abet, or assist such person so owing service or
labor as aforesaid, directly or indirectly, to escape from such
claimant, his agent or attorney, or other person or persons legally
authorized as aforesaid; or shall harbor or conceal such fugitive,
so as to prevent the discovery and arrest of such person, after
notice or knowledge of the fact that such person was a fugitive from
service or labor as aforesaid, shall, for either of said offences,
be subject to a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, and
imprisonment not exceeding six months, by indictment and conviction
before the District Court of the United States for the district in
which such offence may have been committed, or before the proper
court of criminal jurisdiction, if committed within any one of the
organized Territories of the United States; and shall moreover
forfeit and pay, by way of civil damages to the party injured by
such illegal conduct, the sum of one thousand dollars, for each
fugitive so lost as aforesaid, to be recovered by action of debt, in
any of the District or Territorial Courts aforesaid, within whose
jurisdiction the said offence may have been committed.
"SEC. 8. _And be it further enacted_, That the marshals, their
deputies, and the clerks of the said District and Territorial
Courts, shall be paid, for their services, the like fees as may
be allowed to them for similar services in other cases; and where
such services are rendered exclusively in the arrest, custody,
and delivery of the fugitive to the claimant, his or her agent or
attorney, or where such supposed fugitive may be discharged out
of custody for the want of sufficient proof as aforesaid, then
such fees are to be paid in the whole by such claimant, his agent
or attorney; and in all cases where the proceedings are before
a commissioner, he shall be entitled to a fee of ten dollars in
full for his services in each case, upon the delivery of the said
certificate to the claimant, his or her agent or attorney; or a
fee of five dollars in cases where the proof shall not, in the
opinion of such commissioner, warrant such certificate and delivery,
inclusive of all services incident to such arrest and examination,
to be paid, in either case, by the claimant, his or her agent or
attorney. The person or persons authorized to execute the process
to be issued by such commissioners for the arrest and detention of
fugitives from service or labor as aforesaid, shall also be entitled
to a fee of five dollars each for each person he or they may arrest
and take before any such commissioner as aforesaid, at the instance
and request of such claimant, with such other fees as may be deemed
reasonable by such commissioner for such other additional services
as may be necessarily performed by him or them; such as attending
at the examination, keeping the fugitive in custody, and providing
him with food and lodging during his detention, and until the final
determination of such commissioner; and, in general, for performing
such other duties as may be required by such claimant, his or her
attorney or agent, or commissioner in the premises, such fees to be
made up in conformity with the fees usually charged by the officers
of the courts of justice within the proper district or county,
as near as may be practicable, and paid by such claimants, their
agents or attorneys, whether such supposed fugitives from service
or labor be ordered to be delivered to such claimants by the final
determination of such commissioners or not.
"SEC. 9. _And be it further enacted_, That, upon affidavit made by
the claimant of such fugitive, his agent or attorney, after such
certificate has been issued, that he has reason to apprehend that
such fugitive will be rescued by force from his or their possession
before he can be taken beyond the limits of the State in which the
arrest is made, it shall be the duty of the officer making the
arrest to retain such fugitive in his custody, and to remove him to
the State whence he fled, and there to deliver him to said claimant,
his agent, or attorney. And to this end, the officer aforesaid is
hereby authorized and required to employ so many persons as he may
deem necessary to overcome such force, and to retain them in his
service so long as circumstances may require. The said officer and
his assistants, while so employed, to receive the same compensation,
and to be allowed the same expenses, as are now allowed by law
for transportation of criminals, to be certified by the judge of
the district within which the arrest is made, and paid out of the
treasury of the United States.
"SEC. 10. _And be it further enacted_, That when any person held to
service or labor in any State or Territory, or in the District of
Columbia, shall escape therefrom, the party to whom such service
or labor shall be due, his, her, or their agent or attorney, may
apply to any court of record therein, or judge thereof in vacation,
and make satisfactory proof to such court, or judge in vacation, of
the escape aforesaid, and that the person escaping owed service or
labor to such party. Whereupon the court shall cause a record to be
made of the matters so proved, and also a general description of the
person so escaping, with such convenient certainty as may be; and a
transcript of such record, authenticated by the attestation of the
clerk and of the seal of the said court, being produced in any other
State, Territory, or district in which the person so escaping may
be found, and being exhibited to any judge, commissioner, or other
officer authorized by the law of the United States to cause persons
escaping from service or labor to be delivered up, shall be held
and taken to be full and conclusive evidence of the fact of escape,
and that the service or labor of the person escaping is due to the
party in such record mentioned. And upon the production by the said
party of other and further evidence if necessary, either oral or by
affidavit, in addition to what is contained in the said record of
the identity of the person escaping, he or she shall be delivered up
to the claimant. And the said court, commissioner, judge, or other
person authorized by this act to grant certificates to claimants
of fugitives, shall, upon the production of the record and other
evidences aforesaid, grant to such claimant a certificate of his
right to take any such person identified and proved to be owing
service or labor as aforesaid, which certificate shall authorize
such claimant to seize or arrest and transport such person to the
State or Territory from which he escaped: _Provided_, That nothing
herein contained shall be construed as requiring the production
of a transcript of such record as evidence as aforesaid. But in
its absence the claim shall be heard and determined upon other
satisfactory proofs, competent in law.
"Approved, September 18, 1850."--_Statutes at Large_, IX, 462-465.
APPENDIX B
LIST OF IMPORTANT FUGITIVE SLAVE CASES
The following list is not intended to be exhaustive: it by no means
includes all the cases illustrative of the work of the Underground
Road, but it represents fairly well the various phases of that work,
and does not intentionally omit any of the famous cases. Less than
one half of the list here given will be found in Mrs. McDougall's
_Fugitive Slaves_, Appendix D, pp. 124-128.
1. Early escape to Canada.
1748. Negro servant escapes from the English to Canada: _New York
Colonial Manuscripts_, X, 209.
2. Case of ship _Friendship_.
1770. Harbored a slave: Moore, _Slavery in Massachusetts_, 117.
3. Somersett case.
1772. England refuses to return a fugitive slave: Moore, _Slavery
in Massachusetts_, 117; Cobb, _Historical Sketch of Slavery_,
163; Goodell, _Slavery and Anti-Slavery_, 44-52; Hurd, _Law of
Freedom and Bondage_, I, 189-193; Broom, _Constitutional Law_,
6-119; Howells, _State Trials_, XX, 1; Taswell-Langmead, _English
Constitutional History_, 300, n.
4. Dalby's fugitive.
1786. Aided by Quakers in Philadelphia: Sparks, _Washington_, IX,
158; Applegarth, _Quakers of Pennsylvania_, 463.
5. Slave escaped from Drayton.
1786. Difficult to apprehend because, as Washington declared, there
were "numbers who would rather facilitate the escape of slaves than
apprehend them when runaways." Lund, _Origin of the Late War_, I, 20.
6. First recorded case of rescue. (Quincy's case.)
1793. Alleged fugitive rescued from the court-room in Boston: Edw.
C. Learned, _Speech on the New Fugitive Slave Law_, Chicago, Oct.
25, 1850; Whittier, _Prose Works_, II, 129, "A Chapter of History";
Goodell, _Slavery and Anti-Slavery_, 232; _Boston Atlas_, Oct. 15,
1850; McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, 35.
7. Washington's fugitive.
1796, October. Public sentiment in Portsmouth, New Hampshire,
prevents the return of a fugitive slave to President Washington:
_Magazine of American History_, December, 1877, p. 759; Charles
Sumner, _Works_, III, 177; McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, 35.
8. Columbia case.
1804. General Boude defends a runaway: Smedley, _Underground
Railroad_, 26.
9. Case of Wright _vs._ Deacon.
1819. Trial before Supreme Court of Pennsylvania to determine status
of an alleged runaway: 5 Sergeant and Rawle's _Reports_, 63.
10. Case of Hill _vs._ Low.
1822. Action brought in Circuit Court of the United States for the
Eastern District of Pennsylvania for penalty under the law of 1793
for obstructing arrest of a fugitive: 4 Washington's _Circuit Court
Reports_, 327.
11. Case of Commonwealth _vs._ Griffith.
1823. Prosecution in Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts of
a slave-catcher for seizing without a warrant a runaway in New
Bedford: 2 Pickering's _Reports_, 15.
12. Escape of Tice Davids.
1831. Mysterious disappearance of a slave at Ripley, Ohio, leads to
the naming of the Underground Railroad: Rush R. Sloane, _Firelands
Pioneer_, July, 1888, p. 35.
13. Dayton (Ohio) case.
1832, January. Rendition of the fugitive, Thomas Mitchell, at
Dayton, Ohio, followed by the suicide of the negro, at Cincinnati,
when on his way back to slavery: Howe, _Historical Collections of
Ohio_, II, 554, 555.
14. Case of Johnson _vs._ Tompkins.
1833. Prosecution of a claimant for seizure and removal of his
escaped slave from Pennsylvania to New Jersey; followed by counter
prosecution of the abolitionists before Circuit Court of the United
States: 1 Baldwin's _Circuit Court Reports_, 571; 13 _Federal
Cases_, 840.
15. Case of Jack _vs._ Martin.
1835. Action under New York law for recovery of a fugitive from New
Orleans: 12 Wendell's _Reports_, 311.
16. Basil Dorsey case.
1836. Trial and rescue of Dorsey in Bucks County, Pennsylvania:
Smedley, _Underground Railroad_, 356-361; E. H. Magill, "When Men
were Sold. The Underground Railroad in Bucks County," in _The Bucks
County Intelligencer_, Feb. 3, 1898.
17. Matilda case.
1837. March. Rescue of a slave at Cincinnati, Ohio, on her way
from Virginia to Missouri with her master. Later she was found in
the employ of James G. Birney, who was tried for harboring the
fugitive, while Matilda was remanded to her master: Schuckers,
_Life and Public Services of S. P. Chase_, 41-44; Warden, _Private
Life and Public Services of S. P. Chase_, 282-284; _8 Ohio Reports_.
18. Schooner _Boston_ case. (Georgia and Maine controversy.)
1837. Controversy between Georgia and Maine over a stowaway on the
schooner _Boston_, who escaped through Maine to Canada: Wilson,
_Rise and Fall of the Slave Power_, I, 473; Niles's _Register_,
LIII, 71, 72, LV, 356; _Senate Journal_, 1839-40, pp. 235-237;
_Senate Doc._, 26 Cong., 1 Sess., Vol. V, Doc. 273; McDougall,
_Fugitive Slaves_, 41.
19. Case of Peter, _alias_ Lewis Martin.
1837. Fugitive adjudged to his claimant by Circuit Court for the
Southern District of New York: 2 Paine's _Reports_, 350; _16 Federal
Cases_, 881.
20. Philadelphia case.
1838. Attempted rescue of a captured fugitive by a crowd of colored
people: _Liberator_, March 16, 1838.
21. Marion (Ohio) case.
1838. Rescue of a fugitive at Marion, Ohio, from the hands of his
claimant, who sought to detain him after the decision of the court
in the slave's favor: Aaron Benedict, _The Sentinel_, Mt. Gilead,
Ohio, July 13, 1893.
22. Escape of Douglass.
1838. Escape of Frederick Douglass from Baltimore to New York: _Life
and Times of Douglass_; Williams, _Negro Race in America_, II, 59,
422; Wilson, _Rise and Fall of the Slave Power_, I, 501, 502.
23. Isaac Gansey case. (Virginia and New York controversy.)
1839. Controversy between Virginia and New York over extradition of
three negroes demanded by Virginia for aiding a slave to escape:
_U. S. Gazette_, "Case of Isaac," Judge Hopkinson's Speech; Wilson,
_Rise and Fall of the Slave Power_, I, 474; Seward, _Works_, II,
449-518; Von Holst, _Constitutional History_, II, 538-540: _Senate
Documents_, 27 Cong., 2 Sess., Vol. II, Doc. 96; McDougall,
_Fugitive Slaves_, 41.
24. Granville (Ohio) rescue case.
1841. Discharge of fugitive, John, after a hearing obtained through
a writ of habeas corpus; followed by the departure of the negro over
an underground route: Bushnell, _History of Granville_, Licking
County, Ohio, 307, 308.
25. Burr, Work and Thompson case.