University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER X

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IN POLITICS

To set forth the political aspect of the Underground Railroad
is not easy. Yet this side must be understood if the
Underground Railroad is to appear in its true character as
something more than a mere manifestation of the moral
sentiment existing in the North and in some localities of the
South. The romantic episodes in the fugitive slave controversy
have been frequently described; but it has altogether
escaped the eye of the general historian that the
underground movement was one that grew from small
beginnings into a great system; that it must be reckoned
with as a distinct causal factor in tracing the growth of
anti-slavery opinion; that it furnished object lessons in the
horrors of slavery without cessation during two generations
to communities in many parts of the free states; that it was
largely serviceable in developing, if not in originating, the
convictions of such powerful agents in the cause as Harriet
Beecher Stowe and John Brown; that it alone serves to explain
the enactment of that most remarkable piece of legislation,
the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850; and, finally, that it
furnished the ground for the charge brought again and
again by the South against the North of injury wrought by
the failure to execute the law, a charge that must be placed
among the chief grievances of the slave states at the beginning
of the Civil War.

Even in colonial times there was difficulty in recovering
fugitive slaves, because of the aid rendered them by friends,
as is apparent from an examination of some of the regulations
that the colonies began to pass soon after the introduction
of slavery in 1619. The Director and Council of
New Netherlands enacted an ordinance as early as 1640,

GERRIT SMITH, M.C.,

the multi-millionnaire, whose mansion in
Peterboro, New York, was a station.

CHARLES SUMNER,

THE CHAMPION OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED
STATES.

JOSHUA R. GIDDLNGS, M.C.,

who kept a, room in his house in Jefferson,
Ohio, for fugitives

RICHARD H. DANA, Jn.,

COUNSEL FOR COLORED REFUGEES IN
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.

one of the provisions of which forbade all inhabitants of
New Netherlands to harbor or feed fugitive servants under a
penalty of fifty guilders, "for the benefit of the Informer;
1/3 for the new Church and 1/3 for the Fiscal."[1] Other
regulations for the same colony contained clauses prohibiting
the entertainment of runaways; such are the laws of
1642,[2] 1648,[3] 1658,[4] and, after the Dutch had been supplanted
by English control, those of 1702[5] and 1730.[6] An
act of Virginia that went into force in 1642 was attributed
to the complaints made at every quarter court "against
divers persons who entertain and enter into covenants with
runaway servants and freemen who have formerly hired
themselves to others, to the great prejudice if not the utter
undoing of divers poor men, thereby also encouraging servants
to run from their masters and obscure themselves in
some remote plantation." By way of penalty, to break up
the practice of helping runaways, this law provided that
persons guilty of the offence were to be fined twenty pounds
of tobacco for each night's hospitality.[7] That the law was
ineffectual is indicated by the increase of the penalty in 1655
by the addition to the twenty pounds of tobacco for each
night's entertainment of forty pounds for each day's entertainment.[8]
Similar acts were passed by Virginia in 1657,[9]
1666,[10] and 1726.[11] The last act required masters of vessels
to swear that they would make diligent search of their craft
to prevent the stowing away of servants or slaves eager to
escape from their owners. An act of Maryland passed in
1666 established a fine of five hundred pounds of casked
tobacco for the first night's hospitality, one thousand pounds
for the second, and fifteen hundred pounds for each succeeding
night.[12] A law of New Jersey in 1668 laid a penalty of
five pounds in money and such damages as the court should
adjudge upon any one transporting or contriving the transportation
of an apprentice or servant;[13] while another law,
enacted seven years later, declared that every inhabitant
guilty of harboring an apprentice, servant or slave, should
forfeit to his master or dame ten shillings for every day's
concealment, and, if unable to pay this amount, should be
liable to the judgment of the court.[14] Provisions are also to
be found in the regulations of Massachusetts Bay,[15] Rhode
Island,[16] Connecticut,[17] Pennsylvania[18] and North Carolina,[19] clearly intended to discourage the entertainment or the
transportation of fugitives. It is interesting to note that
in these early times Canada was a refuge for fugitives. In
1705 New York passed a law, which was reënacted ten years
later, to prevent the escape of negro slaves from the city
and county of Albany to the French in Canada. The reason
given for the law was the necessity of keeping from the
French in time of war knowledge that might prove serviceable
for military purposes.[20]

The group of enactments just considered together with
many other early measures relating to the subject of fugitives
makes it clear that the question of extradition of runaway
slaves had also arisen in colonial times. A stipulation for
the return of fugitives had been inserted in the formal agreement
entered into by Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut
and New Haven at the time of the formation of the New
England Confederation in 1643,[21] and may be supposed to

have remained in force for a period of forty years. In the
first national constitution, the Articles of Confederation
adopted in 1781, no such provision was made. This omission
soon became serious through the action of the states
of Vermont, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut and
Rhode Island between 1777 and 1784 in taking steps toward
immediate or gradual emancipation; for the first time the question
of the status of fugitives in free regions was now raised.

When, in 1787, the question arose of providing a government
for the territory northwest of the Ohio River, the
difficulty was felt; and the Northwest Ordinance included
a clause for the reclamation of fugitives from labor. A
proposition made by Mr. King in 1785 to prohibit slavery
in this region without any provision for reclaiming fugitives
had gone to committee, but was never afterwards called up
in Congress. In the discussion of 1787 an amendment was
offered by Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts, the first clause of
which excluded slavery from the territory, and the second
clause provided for the rendition of fugitives. The previous
delay and the prompt and unanimous approval of the compromise
measure of Mr. Dane give force to the contention
of a special student of the Ordinance, that the stipulation
forbidding slavery could not have been adopted without the
provision for the recovery of runaways.[22]

About six weeks after the incorporation, by the Continental
Congress, of the fugitive slave clause in the Northwest
Ordinance, a similar provision was made a part of the
Constitution of the United States by the vote of the Federal
Convention at Philadelphia.[23] In the case of the Constitution,
as of the Ordinance, the clause was probably necessary
for the acceptance and adoption of the instrument, and the
action of the legislative body was unanimous.[24]

The settlement reached in regard to fugitives appears to
have excited little comment in the various state conventions
called to ratify the work of the Philadelphia Convention.
It would be interesting to know what was the nature of the
discussion on the point in the North. In the South the tone
of sentiment concerning the matter is illustrated by the
remarks of Madison in the Virginia convention, and of Iredell
and Pinckney in the conventions of North and South
Carolina respectively.[25] Madison asserted of the fugitive
clause that it "secures to us that property which we now
possess." Iredell explained that "In some of the Northern
states they have emancipated all their slaves. If any of
our slaves go there and remain there a certain time, they
would, by the present laws, be entitled to their freedom, so
that their masters could not get them again. This would
be extremely prejudicial to the inhabitants of the Southern
states; and to prevent it this clause is inserted in the Constitution.
Though the word slave is not mentioned, this is
the meaning of it." Pinckney declared: "We have obtained
a right to recover our slaves, in whatever part of
America they may take refuge, which is a right we had not
before. In short, considering the circumstances, we have
made the best terms for the security of this species of property
it was in our power to make. We would have made
better if we could; but, on the whole, I do not think them
bad."[26]

The constitutional provision was, of course, general in its
terms, and, although mandatory in form, did not designate
any particular officer or branch of government to put it into
execution. Accordingly the law of 1793 was enacted. This
law, however, was of such a character as to defeat itself from
the beginning. Before the close of the year in which the
measure was passed a case of resistance occurred, which
showed that adverse sentiment existed in Massachusetts,[27]

and three years later another case—especially interesting
because it concerned an escaped slave of Washington—
demonstrated to the first President that there was strong
opposition in New Hampshire to the law.[28] The method of
proof prescribed by the measure was intended to facilitate
the recovery of fugitives, but it was so slack that it encouraged
the abduction of free negroes from the Northern states,[29]
and thus, by the injustice it wrought, stirred many to give
protection and assistance to negroes.[30] The number of cases
of kidnapping that occurred along the southern border of
the free states between 1793 and 1850 helps doubtless to explain
the development of numerous initial stations of the
Underground Railroad during this period.

The inefficiency of the first Fugitive Slave Act was early
recognized, and the period during which it was in existence
witnessed many attempts at amendment. It is possible that
the failure of Washington to recover his slave in 1796 furnished
the occasion for the first of these.[31] A motion was
made, December 29, 1796, looking toward the alteration of
the law.[32] Apparently nothing was done at this time, and
the matter lapsed until 1801, when it came up in January
and again in December of that year.[33] In the month last
named a committee was appointed in the House, which
reported a bill that gave rise to considerable debate. This
bill provided that employing a fugitive as well as harboring
one should be punishable; and that those furnishing employment
to negroes must require them to show official certificates
and must publish descriptions of them. It is reported that
Southern members "considered it a great injury to the owners
of that species of property, that runaways were employed
in the Middle and Northern states, and even assisted in procuring

a living. They stated that, when slaves ran away
and were not recovered, it excited discontent among the rest.
When they were caught and brought home, they informed
their comrades how well they were received and assisted,
which excited a disposition in others to attempt escaping,
and obliged their masters to use greater severity than they
otherwise would. It was, they said, even on the score of
humanity, good policy in those opposed to slavery to agree
to this law."[34] Northern members did not accept this view
of the fugitive slave question, and when the proposed bill
was put to vote January 18, 1802, it failed of passage.[35] The
division on the measure took place on sectional grounds, all
the Northern members but five voting against it, all the
Southern members but two for it.[36]

For the next fifteen years Congress appears to have given
no consideration to the propriety of amending the law of
1793. Its attention was mainly occupied by the abolition of
the slave-trade, the agitation preliminary to the War of 1812,
and the events of that War.[37] At length, in 1817, a Senate
committee reported a bill to revise the law, but it was never
brought up for consideration. In the same year a bill was
drafted and presented to the House, on account of the need
of a remedy for the increased insecurity of slave property in
the border slave states. Pindall, of Virginia, seems to have
been its originator; at any rate he was the chairman of the
committee that reported the proposition. The interest in
the discussion that resulted was increased, doubtless, by two
petitions, one from the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, asking
for a milder law than that in existence, the other from
the Baltimore Quakers, seeking some security for free negroes
against kidnapping.

The House bill as presented in 1817 secured to the claimant
of a runaway the right to prove his title before the courts

of his own state, and thus to reclaim his human property
through requisition upon the governor of the state in which
it had taken refuge; it was further provided that the writ
of habeas corpus was to have no force as against the provisions
of the proposed act. The objections made to the
measure are worth noting. Mr. Holmes, of Massachusetts
disapproved of the effort to dispense with the writ of habeas
corpus, stating that such action would remove a safeguard
from the liberty of free colored people. Mr. Mason, of the
same state, declared against trial by jury, which somebody
had proposed, insisting that "juries in Massachusetts would
in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred decide in favor of
fugitives, and he did not wish his town (Boston) infected
with the runaways of the South." Mr. Sergeant, of Pennsylvania,
sought to amend the bill by making the judges
of the state in which the arrest occurred the tribunal to
decide the fact of slavery. And, last of all, Mr. Whitman,
of Massachusetts, opposed the provision making it a penal
offence for a state officer to decline to execute the act;
a point, it should be remarked, that came into prominence
in the famous case of Prigg vs. Pennsylvania in 1842.
Notwithstanding these efforts to modify the bill, it was
carried without change, January 30, 1818, by a vote of 84
to 69. In the Senate the bill was not passed without
alteration. After a vote to limit the act to four years,
the upper House made amendments requiring some proofs
of the debt of service claimed other than the affidavit of
the claimant, and then passed the act on March 12. The
lower House did not find the modified bill to its liking, and
therefore declined to consider it further.[38]

This failure to secure a new general fugitive slave act by
no means prevented those interested from renewing their

endeavors in that direction. Before the close of the year
the House was prompted to bestir itself again by a resolution
of the Maryland legislature asking protection against
citizens of Pennsylvania who were charged with harboring
and protecting fugitive slaves.[39] That the allegation was
well founded cannot be doubted. Evidence has already
been adduced to show that numerous branches of the Underground
Railroad had begun to develop in southeastern Pennsylvania
as early at least as the year 1800.[40] A month after
the presentation of the Maryland resolution a committee of
the House was appointed. This committee reported a bill
without delay, but again nothing was accomplished. The
framing of the Missouri Compromise at the next session of
Congress, in 1820, gave opportunity for the incorporation of
a fugitive recovery clause, to enable Southern settlers in
Missouri and other slave states to recapture their absconding
slaves from the free territory north of the new state.[41] The
fugitive clause in the Ordinance of 1787 had insured the
same right for slave-owners taking land along the western
frontier of Illinois.

But of what utility were such provisions unless they could
be carried into effect? Immediately after the Missouri
Compromise became a law, propositions for new fugitive
slave acts were again offered in both the House and the
Senate.[42] A later attempt was made in the winter of 1821–
1822, when another resolution of the Maryland legislature
similar to the one mentioned above was presented. These
efforts, like the earlier ones, failed to secure the desired
legislation.[43]

The last petition of Maryland to Congress for the redress
of her grievance due to the underground operations of
anti-slavery Pennsylvanians was made December 17, 1821.
The month of January of the same year had witnessed the
presentation in Congress of a resolution from the general
assembly of Kentucky, protesting against Canada's admission
of fugitives to her domain, and requesting negotiation
with Great Britain on the subject. In 1826, during the
administration of John Quincy Adams, negotiations were at
length opened. Henry Clay, then Secretary of State, instructed
Mr. Gallatin, the American Minister at the Court
of St. James, to propose an agreement between the two
countries providing for "mutual surrender of all persons
held to service or labor, under the laws of either party,
who escape into the territory of the other." His purpose in
urging such a stipulation was, he declared, "to provide for a
growing evil which has produced some, and if it be not
shortly checked, is likely to produce much more irritation."
He also stated that Virginia and Kentucky were particularly
anxious that an understanding should be reached.

In February, 1827, Mr. Clay again communicated with
Mr. Gallatin on the subject, being led to do so by another
appeal made to the general government by the legislature of
Kentucky. At this time he mentioned the fact that a provision
for the restoration of fugitive slaves had been inserted
in the treaty recently concluded with the United Mexican
States, a treaty, it should be added, that failed of confirmation
by the Mexican Senate. About five months later the
American Minister sent word to the Secretary of State that
the English authorities had decided that "It was utterly
impossible for them to agree to a stipulation for the surrender
of fugitive slaves," and this decision was reaffirmed
in September, 1827.

The positive terms in which this conclusion was announced
by the representative of the British government might have
been accepted as final at this time had not further consideration
of the question been demanded by the House of Representatives.

On May 10, 1828, that body adopted a
resolution "requesting the President to open a negotiation
with the British government in the view to obtain an
arrangement whereby fugitive slaves, who have taken refuge
in the Canadian provinces of that government, may be
surrendered by the functionaries thereof to their masters,
upon their making satisfactory proof of their ownership of
said slaves." This resolution was promptly transmitted to
Mr. Barbour, the new Minister, with the explanation before
made to Gallatin, that the evil at which it was directed was a
growing one, well calculated to disturb "the good neighborhood"
that the United States desired to maintain with the
adjacent British provinces. But as in the case of the former
attempts to secure the extradition of the refugee settlers in
Canada, so also in this, the advances of the American government
were met by the persistent refusal of Great Britain
to make a satisfactory answer.[44]

The agitation in Congress for a more effective fugitive
slave law, and the diplomatic negotiations for the recovery
of runaways from Canadian soil, which have been recounted
in the preceding pages, must be regarded as furnishing evidence
of the existence in many localities in the free states
of a strong practical anti-slavery sentiment. This evidence
is reënforced by the facts presented in the earlier chapters
of this volume. The escape of slaves from their masters
into the free states and their simple but impressive appeals
for liberty were phenomena witnessed again and again by
many Northern people during the opening as well as the
later decades of the nineteenth century; and deepened the
conviction in their minds that slavery was wrong. Thus
for years the runaway slave was a missionary in the cause
of freedom, especially in the rapidly settling Western states.
His heroic pilgrimage, undertaken under the greatest difficulties,
was calculated to excite active interest in his behalf.
Persons living along the border of the slave states, whose
sympathies were stirred to action by their personal knowledge

of the hardships of slavery, became the promoters of
lines of Underground Railroad, sending or taking fugitives
northward to friends they could trust. It was not an infrequent
occurrence that intimate neighbors were called in to
hear the thrilling tales of escape related in the picturesque
and fervid language of negroes that valued liberty more
than life. The writer, who has heard some of these stories
from the lips of surviving refugees in Canada, can well
understand the effect they must have produced upon the
minds of the spectators. Many children got their lasting
impression of slavery from the things they saw and heard
in homes that were stations on the Underground Road.
John Brown was reared in such a home. His father, Owen
Brown, was among the earliest settlers of the Western Reserve
in Ohio that are known to have harbored fugitives,
and the son followed the father's example in keeping open
house for runaway slaves.[45] As early as 1815 many blacks
began to find their way across the Reserve,[46] and it is stated
that even before this year more than a thousand fugitives
had been assisted on their way to Canada by a few antislavery
people of Brown County in southwestern Ohio.[47] It
is probable that numerous escapes were also being made
thus early through other settled regions. The cause for this
early exodus is not far to seek. The increase of the domestic
slave-trade from the northern belt of slaveholding states
to the extreme South, due to the profitableness of cotton-raising,
and stimulated by the prohibition of the foreign
slave-trade in 1807, aroused slaves to flight in order to avoid
being sold to unknown masters in remote regions. The
slight knowledge they needed to guide them in a northerly
course was easily obtainable through the rumors about Canada
everywhere current during the War of 1812.[48] The noticeable
political effects of the straggling migration that
began under these circumstances is seen in the renewed agitation
by Southern members of Congress during the years
1817 to 1822 for a more stringent Fugitive Slave Law, and
the negotiations with England several years later looking
toward the restoration to the South of runaways who had
found freedom and security on Canadian soil.

The influence of the Underground Road in spreading
abroad an abiding anti-slavery sentiment was, of course,
greatly restricted by the caution its operators had to observe
to keep themselves and their protéegés out of trouble.
The deviating secret routes of the great system were developed
in response to the need of passengers that were in constant
danger of pursuit. It is this fact of the pursuit of
runaways into various communities where they were supposed
to be in hiding, together with the harsh scenes enacted
by hireling slave-catchers in raiding some station of the Underground
Road, that gave to the operations of the Road that
publicity necessary to make converts to the anti-slavery cause.
During the earlier years of the Road's development the pursuit
of runaways was not so common as it came to be after
1840, and later, after the passage of the second Fugitive Slave
Law in 1850; but cases are recorded, as already noted, in 1793
in Boston, 1804 in eastern Pennsylvania, 1818 in New Bedford,
Massachusetts, and elsewhere. These are but illustrations
of a class of early cases that brought the question of
slavery home to many Northern communities with such force
as could not have been done in any other way. These cases,
like the numerous cases of kidnapping that occurred during
the same period, contributed not a little to keep alive a sentiment
that was steadily opposed to slavery, and that expressed
and strengthened itself in the practice of harboring and protecting
fugitives. The great effect upon public opinion of
these cases, and such as these, appears from the sad affair of
Margaret Garner, a slave-woman who escaped from Boone
County, Kentucky, late in January, 1856, and found shelter
with her four children in the house of a colored man near
Cincinnati, Ohio. Rather than see her offspring doomed to
the fate from which she had hoped to save them, she nerved
herself to accomplish their death. While her master, successful
in his pursuit, was preparing to take them back across
the river, she began the work of butchery by killing her favorite
child. Before she could finish her awful task she was

interrupted and put in prison. The efforts to prevent her
return to Southern bondage proved unavailing, and she was
at length delivered to her master, together with the children
she had meant to kill. President R. B. Hayes, who was
practising law in Cincinnati at the time, and lived on a pro-slavery
street, told Professor James Monroe, of Oberlin College,
that the tragedy converted "the whole street," and that
the day after the murder "a leader among his pro-slavery
neighbors" called at his house, and declared with great
fervor, "Mr. Hayes, hereafter I am with you. From this
time forward, I will not only be a black Republican, but I
will be a damned abolitionist!"[49]

That the doctrine of immediate abolition should find expression
during the years in which the underground movement
was in its initial stage of development, is a fact the
importance of which should be given due recognition in
tracing the growth of anti-slavery sentiment to 1830, and in
showing thus what was the preparation of the North for the
advent of Garrison and his followers, and for the party movements
in opposition to slavery. It is surely worthy of remark
in this connection that, of the three men that promulgated
the idea of immediate abolition before 1830, one published a
book, containing, besides other things, an argument in support
of the assistance rendered to fugitive slaves, while another
was known both in Ohio and in the Southern states as
an intrepid underground operator.

Of the trio the first in point of time as also in pungency of
statement was the Rev. George Bourne, who went to live in
Virginia about 1809 after several years residence in Maryland.
Mr. Bourne's acquaintance with slavery impressed him deeply
with the evils of the system, and he accordingly felt constrained
to preach and also to publish some vehement protests
against it. For this he was persecuted and driven from Virginia,
and, like a hunted slave, he found his way in the night
into Pennsylvania, where he settled with his family. Among
his writings is a small volume entitled The Book and Slavery
Irreconcilable, published in 1816 and addressed to all that

professed to be members of Christian churches. In it the
author vigorously and repeatedly urged the" immediate and
total abolition "of slavery, and warned his contemporaries of
the consequences of continuing the system until by its growth
it should endanger the Union. He could discover no palliative
suitable to the evil." The system is so entirely corrupt,"
he said," that it admits of no cure but by a total and immediate
abolition. For a gradual emancipation is a virtual recognition
of the right, and establishes the rectitude of the practice. If
it be just for one moment, it is hallowed forever; and if it be
inequitable, not a day should it be tolerated."[50]

Eight years after the appearance of the book containing
these uncompromising views, a treatise was published at the
town of Vevay on the Ohio River in southeastern Indiana
by the Rev. James Duncan. This small work was entitled
A Treatise on Slavery, in which is shown forth the Evil of
Slaveholding, both from the Light of Nature and Divine Revelation.
The purpose of the work as set forth by the author
was to persuade all slaveholders that they were "guilty of
a crime, not only of the highest aggravation, but one that,
if persisted in," would "inevitably lead them to perdition."[51]
He therefore assailed the principle of slavery, denying the
argument admitted by some of the apologists for slavery
among his contemporaries, namely, "that the emancipation
of slaves need not be sudden, but gradual, lest the possessors
of them should be too much impoverished, and lest the free
inhabitants might be exposed to danger, if the blacks were
all liberated at once." This doctrine of the inexpediency of
immediate abolition Mr. Duncan denied, taking the position
that such excuses would "go to justify the practice of slaveholding,
because the only motive that men can have to practise
slavery is that it may be a means of preventing poverty
and other penal evils. If the fear of poverty or any penal

sufferings will exculpate the possessors of slaves from blame
for a few months or years, it will do it for life; and if some
may be lawfully held to labor without wages, all may be
held the same way; and if the principle of slavery is morally
wrong, it ought not to be practised to avoid any penal evil,
but if just, even the cruel treatment of slaves would not condemn
the practice."[52] He maintained that, although the different
sections of the country were not equally guilty of the
sins of slaveholding, yet the nation as a whole was responsible
for the evil,—on account of the number in the free
states that were friendly to slavery, on account also of the
advocacy by Northern representatives of the policy of slavery
extension, and, finally, on account of the slack zeal of some
of those inimical to the institution.[53] He proposed that Christians
should have no church fellowship with slaveholders; he
urged political action against slavery; and he supplemented
the assertion that it was the duty of slaves to escape if they
could, by the statement that it was impossible for any one to
hinder or prevent their escape without flying in the face of
the moral law.[54] As regards gradualism, which was practised
in some states, he said: "If it is lawful to hold a man in
bondage until he is twenty-eight years of age, it must be
equally lawful to hold him to the day of his death; and if
it is sinful to hold him to the day of his death, it must partake
of the same species of crime to hold him until he is
twenty-eight."[55] The arguments in support of his position
he based largely upon the Decalogue, the Golden Rule and
other scriptural injunctions, as well as upon the Declaration
of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.[56]
Underground operators always justified themselves on these
grounds; and their motives in joining the Liberty and Free
Soil parties later—as many of them did—appear not to have
been other than the motives of Bourne and Duncan in advocating
political action against slavery.

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,[57] 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."[58] 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

REV. JOHN RANKIN.

(From a bust by Ellen Rankin Copp, of Chicago, Illinois.)

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."[59] 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.[60]

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 antislavery
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,[61] and in Number 17 of the
first volume of the Liberator appears an extract quoted from
Bourne's work.[62] It is certain that Garrison was familiar
with the work as early as September 13, 1830,[63] and he may
have been so earlier. He arrived at the doctrine during the

summer of 1829, before his association with Lundy at Baltimore.[64]
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.[65] 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.[66]

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.[67] 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.[68] 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."[69] 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.

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.[70] 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.

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."[71] 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."[72]

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,[73] 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.[74] 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."[75] 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."[76] 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.[77]

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."[78] 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.

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.[79] 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.

"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."[80] 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?"[81]

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."[82]

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 Iowa, 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.[83]
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.[84] 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.

"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."[85]

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.[86] 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.[87]

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.[88]
There were many other instances in which communities were
given the opportunity to show their spirit in the defence of
helpless bondmen.

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."[89]

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.[90]

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.[91] 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 I! 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."

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 Me Henry, 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.[92]

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

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.

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 1838, she visited an estate, which is described
as that of Colonel Shelby in Uncle Tom's Cabin.[93]
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.

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."[94] 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."[95] 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."[96] 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.[97]

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."[98] 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.[99]

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."[100]

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
Unde Tom's Cabin were ready to vote with the party whose
existence was based on opposition to an extension of the
great evil."[101] They were also ready to fight for the cause of
union and of freedom in 1861.

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;[102] in July he offered a resolution instructing the
Committee on Judiciary to report a bill for this purpose;[103]
and in August he sought to secure his end by proposing an
amendment to the civil and diplomatic appropriations bill.[104]
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."[105] 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."[106]

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 Ms 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.[107]

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.[108]

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.[109] 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.[110]

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,[111] 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.[112]

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
haying 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.[113]

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.[114]

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 eyewitness
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."[115]
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.

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. . . ."[116] The
number of centres in Illinois in which the act was disapproved

and violated was far beyond the knowledge of ex-Governor
Reynolds.

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.[117]

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."[118] 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.

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.[119] 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."[120]

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.[121] It is worthy of note also that this party at its state
convention, held in June, demanded the repeal of the Fugitive
Slave Act.[122] 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.[123]

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.[124] 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.[125]

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

CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN.

(From a photograph in the possession of the Kansas State Historical Society.)

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."[126] 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.[127]
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.