University of Virginia Library

9. Reports of Societies

The reports of anti-slavery societies, especially those of Massachusetts
and Pennsylvania, are rich in comments upon the prosecutions in the
South of abductors of slaves, and do not fail to show the effect of the
Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 upon the activity of Underground Railroad
lines They also tell something of the missionary work done among the
refuses in Canada. In the last-named respect they are secondary to the
Reports of the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada, the Refugees' Home Society,
and the Canada Mission.

Within the past ten years various societies of the historical type have
been instrumental, directly or indirectly, in the publication of addresses
bearing upon the violation of the Fugitive Slave laws, A series of lectures

before the Political Science Association of the University of Michigan,
several of which involve this theme, were published in 1889 under
the general title, Constitutional History of the United States as seen in the
Development of American Law. A collection of letters and addresses commemorative
of the anti-slavery movement and some of its leaders was
printed in 1893 in a book, called Old Anti-Slavery Days, by the Danvers
(Mass.) Historical Society. An address on "The Underground
Railroad" by ex-President James H. Fairchild, of Oberlin College, forms
Tract No. 87 in Vol. IV. of the publications of the Western Reserve
Historical Society. The best account of the Glover rescue case will be
found in a pamphlet by Mr. Vroman Mason on the Fugitive Slave Law
in Wisconsin, with Reference to Nullification Sentiment, issued in 1895 by
the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.