The First Case of Rescue.
§ 34. The first case of rescue.—The first attempt to enforce the act of 1793, of which any record has been discovered, immediately revealed its unfairness, and the indisposition of the North to carry it out.
Mr. Josiah Quincy, then a young lawyer, afterwards known as a public man and the President of Harvard College, has left an interesting account of his connection with the case. "He states that the process was issued by a justice of the peace, that he was retained as counsel for the alleged slave, that he prepared his brief, and went down loaded with all the necessary authorities. He found a great crowd of people assembled; but while he was in the midst of the argument, he heard a noise, and, turning around, he saw the constables lying sprawling on the floor, and a passage opening through the crowd, through which the fugitive was taking his departure without stopping to hear the opinion of the court, and that was the last of that case, and that was the last of the law of 1793 in Massachusetts."[169]
§ 35. President Washington's demand for a fugitive.—As has been noticed in a previous chapter, George Washington's boyhood was connected with white slavery. Now, at the zenith of his public life, we find one of his chattels the occasion of the first recorded refusal on moral grounds to return a slave. In 1796, President Washington wrote to Mr. Whipple, Collector of Portsmouth, N. H., to send back to him one of his slaves who had escaped to that place, if it could be done without exciting a mob. This letter has been preserved, and the following extract gives us an insight into President Washington's opinions upon the rendition of fugitives:—
"However well disposed I might be to gradual abolition, or even to an entire emancipation of that description of people, (if the latter was in itself practicable,) at this moment it would neither be politic nor just to reward unfaithfulness with a premature preference, and thereby discontent beforehand the minds of all her fellow serv'ts, who, by their steady attachment, are far more deserving than herself of favor."[170]
Mr. Whipple answered, that any return would be impossible; public sentiment was too strong against it.