THE EXECUTION OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW, AND THE ELECTION OF 1852
Change of Attitude of the Slaveholders by the Fugitive Slave Law of
1850--The First Cases Under the New Law--The Opposition to the
Execution of the Law--Establishment of the "Underground"--The Support
of the Law by the Political Leaders--The President's Support of the
Law--Joshua R. Giddings--Petitions for the Repeal of the Law--The
Shadrach Case--The Investigation of the Case by Congress--The Question
of Increasing the Power of the President to Execute the Law--The Sims
Case--Excitement in Boston Over the Rendition of Sims--The "Jerry
Rescue"--The President's Rebuke--Mr. Foote's Finality Resolutions--The
Failure of the Resolutions to Pass the Senate, but Their Success in
the House--The National Conventions of 1852 and the Finality of the
Compromise Measures--The Deaths of Clay and of Webster, and the
Appearance of a Free-soil Candidate--The Overwhelming Democratic
Victory of 1852--The True Policy of the Slaveholders, and Their
Failure to Discern It.
[Sidenote: Change of attitude of the slaveholders by the Fugitive
Slave Law of 1850.]
Down to the time of the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850,
it may be said that the slaveholders were acting, in a certain sense,
on the defensive. Before 1787, slavery had been regarded as a
temporary relation, demanded by the moral and intellectual degradation
of the Africans, and by the necessities of the social structure in
which Anglo-Saxon and negro were brought together. It had been
considered that the rise of the negro in civilization, by his contact
with the white race, {366} would gradually change this relation in the
direction of freedom. In fact it had done so, in a considerable
degree. But the formation of the Constitution of 1787, the invention
and use of the cotton-gin, the acquisition of Louisiana, and the
general subsidence of the revolutionary spirit of the eighteenth
century, were all unfavorable to further progress in this only proper
and correct direction. Between 1830 and 1840, a strong retrogressive
movement set in, as we have seen, provoked indeed, in a considerable
degree, by the Abolition propaganda; and in consequence of it, the
slaveholders abandoned the only moral principle upon which slavery
could be justified, and began to adopt the idea of the permanency of
the relation, and to undertake the adjustment of the laws, customs,
institutions, and policies of the country to this idea. And, at last,
by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, they committed the whole country to
this course. In a word, they made slavery by this law a national
matter, and they did it from the property point of view of slavery,
the point of view which exhibits it in its most hateful light, and
from which no moral justification whatsoever for its existence can be
found.
It is true that the Constitution commanded the return of fugitive
slaves, and that the Supreme Court of the United States had
interpreted the provision as vesting the power of executing this
command in, and imposing the duty of its execution exclusively upon,
the general Government, but it was a fatal policy for the slaveholders
to insist upon the realization of this right through the general
Government. In fact, it was a fatal policy to insist upon its
realization at all. There was no way to effect it without requiring
the aid of the North in the perpetuation of slavery. The attempt to
effect it was, therefore, the assumption of an offensive attitude on
the part of the slaveholders, an attitude which was bound to {367}
provoke a general hostility to slavery throughout the North, instead
of the indifference which had prevailed under the idea that slavery
was an institution of the Southern Commonwealths, with which the North
and the general Government had no concern. Calhoun and Rhett and Davis
had seen this danger, and they were not supporters of a national
fugitive slave law. They preferred to consider the matter of the
rendition of fugitive slaves as a special compact between the
"States," and treat its non-fulfilment as a rupture of the Union.
Possibly, protected as their "States" were by the border slaveholding
Commonwealths, they did not feel the necessity of such a law. At any
rate, it was the border slaveholding Commonwealths which wanted the
law.
[Sidenote: The first cases under the new law.]
The first apprehension of an escaped slave, under the new Act, was
made in the city of New York. One James Hamlet, who had three years
before left his mistress, Mary Brown, of Baltimore, was the victim. He
had a wife and children in New York. He was surprised at his work,
hastily tried, and delivered to Mrs. Brown's agent, who conducted him
back to Baltimore. When the news of the event spread abroad it created
great excitement among the negro population throughout the North, and
great indignation on the part of the white citizens in many quarters.
[Sidenote: The opposition to the execution of the law.]
It was calculated that there were from fifteen to twenty thousand
escaped slaves living at that time in the non-slaveholding
Commonwealths who were liable to apprehension under the law; and every
person having any negro blood, whether escaped from slavery or not,
felt the insecurity created by the law. Meetings of persons belonging
to these classes were immediately held in Boston and New York, and
resolutions were passed at them, praying the white people to move for
the repeal of the law.
{368} In answer, so to speak, to these appeals, mass-meetings of white
people were held in Lowell, Syracuse, and Boston, at which the law was
denounced, its repeal demanded, and aid pledged to the negroes in the
North in resisting the execution of the law. Ministers of the Gospel,
such as Beecher, Storrs, Furness, Spear, and Cheever, rained down
denunciations upon the law from their pulpits, declared it to be in
direct contravention of the law of God, and counselled resistance to
its execution.
[Sidenote: Establishment of the "Underground."]
In the midst of this excitement two Georgia slaves, named William and
Ellen Crafts, had succeeded in reaching Boston, and were concealed by
some of the most high-toned people of that city, the Hillards,
Lorings, and Parkers, from their pursuers, and aided in a successful
escape to England. The first branch of the "Underground," established
after the passage of the law, ran through very respectable quarters.
[Sidenote: The support of the law by the political leaders.]
The lawyers, politicians, and statesmen now felt that it was high time
for them to call the people back to the proper comprehension and
observance of their constitutional duties. Clay, Webster, Cass,
Douglas, Buchanan, Shields, Curtis, Choate, and many others,
instructed the people, both in speeches and written articles, in
regard to the constitutionality of the law, and their duty to obey its
requirements. With this the tide of public opinion began to change,
and the idea that it was the constitutional duty of the North to the
South to secure the execution of the law began to prevail. Such was
the state of feeling when the Congressional session of 1850-51 opened,
on December 2nd.
[Sidenote: The President's support of the law.]
In his message to Congress President Fillmore proclaimed his adherence
to the Compromise Measures, as a {369} final settlement of the
subjects to which they related, said that he believed the great mass
of the American people sympathized with him, indicated that he would
veto any measure for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law, and
declared that he would execute the laws to the utmost of his ability
and to the extent of the power vested in him.
This bold and determined language on the part of the President, who
had been considered in the North as personally hostile to the Fugitive
Slave Law, took the North somewhat by surprise, painfully so in some
quarters, while it was highly approved at the South. It undoubtedly
contributed, ultimately and in large degree, to the suppression of the
resistance in the North to the execution of the law. At the moment,
however, it drew out some of the bitterest denunciations of the law
which were ever pronounced.
[Sidenote: Joshua R. Giddings.]
Mr. Joshua R. Giddings, of Ohio, moved the reference of this part of
the message to the Judiciary committee in the House of
Representatives, and made a speech in support of his motion, which was
an anti-slavery harangue of the most radical and violent character,
and in the course of which he denounced the President and Mr. Webster
in unmeasured language as apostates from principle and suitors for
Southern favor. The reckless outburst of radical extravagance,
although somewhat balanced by many points of sound sense, disgusted
the House, and it voted down Mr. Giddings' motion by a large majority.
[Sidenote: Petitions for the repeal of the law.]
[Sidenote: The Shadrach case.]
Petitions began now to flow into Congress for the repeal of the law.
Generally they were laid upon the table, but more than once a fierce
debate was opened, which threatened to precipitate another contest
over the right of petition. It was about the time that the Senate was
considering what {370} to do with one of these petitions, offered by
Mr. Hamlin, of Maine, in February of 1851, that the news of the
failure of the law in the Shadrach case reached Washington. Shadrach,
claimed slave of John DeBree, of Norfolk, Va., was rescued by a negro
mob, while held in custody in the court-house in Boston under a
warrant from the United States Commissioner, Mr. George T. Curtis, and
was spirited away to Canada. The mob seems to have had no difficulty
in accomplishing its purpose.
[Sidenote: The investigation of the case by Congress.]
The Senate, on motion of Mr. Clay, passed a resolution, on February
18th, 1851, calling upon the President for information concerning the
failure of the law in the Shadrach case, and the means he had adopted
to meet the occurrence, and asking the President if, in his opinion,
further means should be placed at his disposal by Congress for
enabling him to execute the laws with more success.
On the 21st, the reply of the President was received. It contained an
account of the occurrence in Boston; a summary of the laws of the
United States and of Massachusetts on the subject of confining United
States prisoners in the jails of the Commonwealth, which demonstrated
the fact that Massachusetts had forbidden the use of her jails and the
aid of her officials in fugitive slave cases; a declaration of opinion
that the President was authorized by the Constitution to use the
regular army and navy, when, in his judgment, it was necessary for the
suppression of violence and the execution of the laws, and without
giving warning of his intention by any proclamation; and a suggestion
to Congress to confirm this opinion by a positive act, which would
include the militia as well as the regular army and navy, and would
authorize a marshal or commissioner of the {371} United States to
summon an organized militia force as a part of the posse comitatus.
[Sidenote: The question of increasing the power of the President to
execute the law.]
Mr. Clay immediately moved the reference of the communication to the
Judiciary committee. This motion called out a three days debate in the
Senate, during which it became manifest that the extremists, from both
the North and the South, had little faith in the power of the
Government to execute the law, and were unfavorable to the policy of
using the military power in its execution. Mr. Chase and Mr. Hale, on
the one side, and Mr. Butler, Mr. Davis, and Mr. Rhett, on the other,
contended that the provision of the Constitution guaranteeing the
rendition of fugitive slaves did not require a Congressional act, even
if it authorized one. Mr. Davis said that he would see Massachusetts
quit the Union rather than execute the law by military power within
her limits. It was evident that these men were not anxious to have the
law executed at all. Their motives for the same must have been very
different, but it would hardly be an unfair speculation if one should
imagine that the slaveholders were not averse to having the failure of
the law for another count in their indictment against the Union.
The moderate men, however, of both the North and the South, claimed
that the law was constitutional, that it was politic and necessary,
that it had been successfully executed in a number of cases, that it
could be executed in practically all cases, that it must be, even
though it should require the whole military power of the country, and
that the great mass of the people would sustain it as carrying out the
pledges of the Constitution.
Mr. Clay's motion was finally unanimously voted, and, on March 3rd,
two reports were presented to the {372} Senate, one signed by all the
members of the Judiciary committee except Mr. Butler, of South
Carolina, and the other by Mr. Butler alone. The former expressed the
opinion that the President already possessed full and adequate powers
to execute the laws, and that no further legislation upon the subject
was necessary. It also held that the organized military could be
summoned and used by a civil officer as a part of the posse comitatus.
Mr. Butler, while agreeing with the other members in recommending no
further legislation for the execution of the law, denied that the
President had the power from the Constitution to use the regular army
and navy at his own discretion in suppressing insurrections and
executing the laws, and held that the President could employ these
forces for such purposes in the same manner only that he could employ
the militia, that is, under the Congressional Acts of 1795 and 1807,
which required, among other things, that a proclamation should precede
the actual employment of military power in such cases.
Congress closed its session, on the next day, without having changed
or modified the law, and without having given the President any
additional means for its execution. The thoughts of men were turned
again upon the incidents of its execution.
[Sidenote: The Sims case.]
During the spring of 1851, several cases of slave apprehension
occurred, the most exciting of which was that of Thomas Sims, claimed
in Boston by Mr. James Potter, of Georgia. He was arrested by the City
Marshal on the charge of having committed a larceny, and put under
guard in the Court House. Charles G. Loring, Robert Rantoul, Jr., and
Samuel E. Sewall, lawyers of much ability and men of high social
standing, offered their services in defence of the negro. After
applying to several judges of the {373} supreme court of the
Commonwealth, without success, for a writ of habeas corpus, they
finally obtained one from Judge Woodbury, and argued the case before
him. The Judge finally refused to interfere with the possession of the
negro by the United States Marshal. The United States Commissioner,
Mr. George T. Curtis, then heard the case, and issued the certificate
for the rendition of the fugitive to his master. In the early morning
of the next day, the negro was conducted by three hundred armed
policemen to the wharf and placed on board a vessel bound for
Savannah. The vessel sailed safely out of port, and the Fugitive Slave
Law was, at last, executed in Boston.
[Sidenote: Excitement in Boston over the rendition of Sims.]
During the trial, and for a week afterward, the city was in a fever of
excitement. Meetings of the citizens were held in Tremont Temple and
Washington Hall, and on the Common, at which the eloquence of
Phillips, Channing, Edmund Quincy, and Horace Mann, and the violent
words of Garrison and Parker, stirred the indignation of their hearers
and lashed it into an almost rebellious fury. A very large part of the
inhabitants felt that a stain had been put upon the city, which must
be wiped out by any means necessary to accomplish it.
The summer months of 1851 now passed without any notable instances of
resistance to the law, and conservative men, of both the North and the
South, began to hope that the worst was over, and that the North would
acquiesce without further opposition in the execution of the odious
Act.
[Sidenote: The "Jerry rescue."]
In the early autumn, however, violence again appeared. The minor
outbreaks were soon overshadowed by an event which occurred at
Syracuse, N. Y., in October, 1851. A negro, named Jerry McHenry, who
had lived for several years in Syracuse, was suddenly {374} seized and
carried before the United States Commissioner. In the course of the
hearing he eluded the officer having him in charge, and bounded out of
the court-room. He was, however, overtaken and, after a fierce
struggle, recaptured and brought back. A little later, a party of
highly respectable men, led by Gerrit Smith and the Rev. S. J. May,
broke into the court-room, rescued the negro, and smuggled him safely
across the Canadian boundary. Eighteen of these gentlemen were
indicted and ordered to appear for trial. But the whole community
manifested so much active sympathy with them that the matter was
quietly dropped.
[Sidenote: The President's rebuke.]
In his message to Congress, of December 2nd, 1851, President Fillmore
referred to these cases of resistance to the execution of the law;
declared the law to be required by the Constitution; denounced the
opposition to its execution as directed against the Constitution and
the Union itself; repeated his dictum that the Compromise Measures
were a final settlement of the subjects embraced in them; and
congratulated the country upon the general acquiescence in these
Measures manifested throughout the Union.
[Sidenote: Mr. Foote's finality resolutions.]
Two days later, Mr. Foote introduced into the Senate a resolution
declaring these Measures to be a definite settlement of the questions
embraced in them, and recommending acquiescence in them by all good
citizens.
[Sidenote: The failure of the resolutions to pass the Senate, but
their success in the House.]
The debate upon this proposition, which began December 8th, and
lasted, off and on, until February 28th, was, in the main, a
discussion between four Southern members--Mr. Foote, Mr. Butler, Mr.
Rhett, and Mr. Clemens--during which the history of the movements of
the Southern leaders in 1850 and 1851 were brought to light, beginning
with the Southern Address, issued {375} from Washington before the
passage of the Compromise Measures, for the purpose of producing a
united action on the part of the South in behalf of Southern rights,
and the call of the Nashville convention by the Mississippi
legislature, and ending with the demand of the convention for the line
of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes to the Pacific Ocean, and the
declaration by the convention and by conventions in Mississippi,
Georgia, and South Carolina, of the abstract right of secession as a
principle of the political system of the Union. It was evident that
these movements had approached dangerously near to an attempt at
something like practical secession, and that the Southern leaders were
now anxious to underrate their significance. The Northern Senators
allowed these Southern brethren to proceed with criminations and
recriminations against each other, until they themselves were
convinced that they would lose more by the continuance of the debate
than they could gain by the passage of the resolution. After a fiery
speech by Mr. Clemens, on February 28th, 1852, the attempt to pass the
resolution was abandoned in the Senate.
The House of Representatives, on the other hand, incited by memorials
sent into it by the legislatures of New Jersey and Iowa, actually
passed resolutions, on April 5th, 1852, by a large majority, declaring
the finality of the Measures.
Petitions began again to pour into the Senate for the repeal of the
law. Mr. Seward, Mr. Hale, and Mr. Sumner presented such petitions and
tried to get a hearing upon them, but the Senate voted to lay them all
on the table.
[Sidenote: The National conventions of 1852 and the finality of the
compromise measures.]
Such was the situation when the two great parties assembled in their
National conventions for the {376} nomination of their respective
candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency. It was indicated
from the first day of the Congressional session of 1851-52, that the
finality of the Compromise Acts would be a plank in the platforms of
both parties, although it was soon revealed that the Whig party
leaders were divided upon the subject.
The Democratic convention met June 1st, at Baltimore, and, on account
of the three-cornered fight between Buchanan, Cass, and Douglas, was
obliged to produce a "dark horse." This proved to be General Franklin
Pierce, of New Hampshire, a good lawyer, a brave soldier, a fine
orator, and a courtly gentleman. He was known to be a true friend to
the Compromise Acts, and was entirely acceptable to the South. The
platform contained the finality plank.
The Whig convention met fifteen days later, at the same place. The
Northern Whigs, under the lead of Seward, were determined to defeat
both Fillmore and Webster, chiefly on account of their fidelity in the
execution of the Fugitive Slave Law. The Southerners were for Fillmore
first, and then Webster, for the same reason. A sufficient number of
the Northern delegates voted with the Southerners to put the finality
plank into the platform, and then offered the Southerners one of their
own fellow-citizens, General Scott, the military hero of the country.
The Southerners finally accepted the offer.
If Seward desired the defeat and destruction of the Whig party, he
could not have acted more adroitly. It was to be foreseen that the
Northern Whigs would not be wholly faithful to their own choice upon
that platform, and that many of the Southern Whigs would arrive at the
conclusion that the Democratic platform and the Democratic candidate
furnished stronger guarantees for {377} the finality of the Compromise
Measures than the Whig platform and candidate did.
[Sidenote: The deaths of Clay and of Webster, and the appearance of a
Free-soil candidate.]
Clay died at the beginning of the campaign, and Webster at the end of
it; and, in the midst of it, Sumner succeeded in getting in his
ferocious attack on the Fugitive Slave Law, in a four hours speech
before the Senate, and the Free-soilers set up a candidate, Mr. Hale,
for the suffrages of the Abolitionists and the
anti-slavery-extensionists. All of these events were unfavorable to
the Whigs; still, they did not probably determine the result. The
people were determined to have peace in regard to the slavery
question, and they felt that the Democratic party was more likely to
give them the peace they desired than the Whig party.
[Sidenote: The overwhelming Democratic victory of 1852.]
The Democratic victory was overwhelming. Twenty-seven Commonwealths
gave their electoral vote for General Pierce, and only four gave
theirs for General Scott; while the popular vote cast for Mr. Hale was
only about one-half as large as that cast for Mr. Van Buren in 1848.
The Democrats themselves were surprised. Since the "era of good
feeling," no presidential candidate had received such a vote, either
popular or electoral, as that now given to General Pierce. The country
accepted the decision, and settled down into universal acquiescence in
the Compromise Measures, and in the execution of the Fugitive Slave
Law, in most sections cheerfully, but in some sullenly and with
bitterness of heart.
[Sidenote: The true policy of the slaveholders, and their failure to
discern it.]
Had the slaveholders made a wise use of this, to them, most favorable
turn in affairs, there is little question that they might have
preserved indefinitely their peculiar institution where it existed.
But wisdom in the case meant that the slaveholders should themselves
give no further {378} occasion for slavery agitation. It meant that
they should cease to claim the rendition of their fugitive slaves by
the general Government; that they should turn their attention to
perfecting the police administration in the slaveholding Commonwealths
for preventing the escape of their slaves, and let the few slaves who
might have cleverness enough to elude the police of these
Commonwealths go; and that they should, above all things, abstain from
any attempt to extend slavery beyond the limits placed upon it by
existing law. The status of every inch of the territory of the United
States, in reference to the legality or illegality of slavery, was now
fixed, and the public opinion of the country, of the world, and of the
age, would never permit that status to be altered to the advantage of
slavery.
It is an interesting, though by no means an inexplicable, fact that
the slaveholders in the Commonwealths south of Virginia, Kentucky, and
Missouri, showed more tendency to follow this view of their best
policy than those within these border Commonwealths. These latter were
an efficient protection to the former in preventing the escape of
slaves, while they were themselves exposed in much higher degree to
loss. Still, it would have been the true policy for the slaveholders
in these also to have looked to their own police administration for
the recapture of their runaways before the latter had reached free
soil, and to have considered that a slave having sufficient
intelligence to elude this had already attained the point of mental
activity and of courage which required in good morals his liberation,
and made his further retention in slavery both a wrong to himself and
a danger to the peace of the slaveholding community in which he might
be held in bondage.
We may fairly say that the slaveholders in the more southern
Commonwealths sustained the Fugitive Slave {379} Law more out of
consideration for their brothers in the border Commonwealths than for
the sake of their own immediate interests, or from their own
convictions of its policy, while they would have greatly preferred the
restriction of slavery to the territory south of the line of
thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes to the Pacific, with some sort
of a guarantee of its existence there during the Territorial period,
to any chance of extending slavery north of that line by the repeal of
the prohibitions already existing. It is not at all surprising, in
view of this state of feeling in 1852, that, ten years later, the
Confederates considered themselves left in the lurch by the border
Commonwealths, in the support of whose views and interests they had
done so much to provoke the North to the contest.
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