The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom: A comprehensive history

by Wilbur Henry Siebert

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, 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."[838] Other regulations for the same colony contained clauses prohibiting the entertainment of runaways; such are the laws of 1642,[839] 1648,[840] 1658,[841] and, after the Dutch had been supplanted by English control, those of 1702[842] and 1730.[843] 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.[844] 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.[845] Similar acts were passed by Virginia in 1657,[846] 1666,[847] and 1726.[848] 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.[849] 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;[850] 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.[851] Provisions are also to be found in the regulations of Massachusetts Bay,[852] Rhode Island,[853] Connecticut,[854] Pennsylvania[855] and North Carolina,[856] 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.[857]

GERRIT SMITH, M.C.,
the multi-millionnaire, whose mansion in Peterboro, New York, was a station.

JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS, M.C.,
who kept a room in his house in Jefferson, Ohio, for fugitives.

CHARLES SUMNER,

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

RICHARD H. DANA, Jr.,
COUNSEL FOR COLORED REFUGEES IN BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.

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,[858] 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.[859]

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.[860] 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.[861]

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.[862] 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."[863]

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,[864] 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.[865] 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,[866] and thus, by the injustice it wrought, stirred many to give protection and assistance to negroes.[867] 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.[868] A motion was made, December 29, 1796, looking toward the alteration of the law.[869] 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.[870] 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."[871] 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.[872] 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.[873]

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.[874] 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.[875]

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.[876] 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.[877] 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.[878] 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.[879] 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.[880]

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.[881]

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.[882] As early as 1815 many blacks began to find their way across the Reserve,[883] 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 anti-slavery people of Brown County in southwestern Ohio.[884] 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.[885] 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 protégés 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!"[886]

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."[887]

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."[888] 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."[889] 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.[890] 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.[891] 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."[892] 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.[893] 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,[894] and in the letters themselves he attacked the system of American slavery in unmistakable language. In principle he stood clearly with Bourne and Duncan, as he afterwards came to the support of Garrison, although he did not use the words "immediate abolition." He held that "Avarice tends to enslave, but justice requires emancipation."[895] He heard with impatience the excuse for continued slaveholding that freedom would ruin the blacks because they were not capable of doing for themselves, and must, therefore, either all starve or steal. With sarcasm he exclaimed, "Immaculate tenderness! Astonishing sympathy! But what is to be dreaded more than such tenderness and sympathy? Who would wish to have them exercised upon himself?... And have not many of those [slaves] who have been emancipated in America become wealthy and good citizens?... We are commanded to 'do justly and love mercy,' and this we ought to do without delay, and leave the consequences attending it to the control of Him who gave the command."[896] It has been noted in another place that Mr. Rankin was for years an active agent of the Underground Railroad, in association with a number of abolitionists of his neighborhood, among whom he was a recognized leader.[897]

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

The idea has somehow gained credence in the general accounts of the anti-slavery movement that the Garrisonian movement was one that could scarcely be said to have had precursors in the earlier agitation; and the pre-Garrison abolitionists have been thought of, apparently, as marked by mild philanthropy, adherence to law and tolerance. It has been supposed that an interval of inactivity followed upon the earlier movements, and that the later movement was thus a thing apart, radically different in its character from anything that had gone before. In view of the evidence brought together in this volume it is perhaps not too much to say that a real continuity of development is traceable through the period with which we have had to do, and that many little communities throughout the country, under the influences always at work, had germinated the idea of immediate abolition, in support of which texts were easily found in the Bible; and that thus the way had been prepared for the anti-slavery ideas and activities of 1830 and the subsequent years. Mr. Garrison himself "confessed his indebtedness for his views" of slavery to Bourne's The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable, next after the Bible itself,[898] and in Number 17 of the first volume of the Liberator appears an extract quoted from Bourne's work.[899] It is certain that Garrison was familiar with the work as early as September 13, 1830,[900] and he may have been so earlier. He arrived at the doctrine during the summer of 1829, before his association with Lundy at Baltimore.[901] It cannot be determined when Garrison first became acquainted with the Letters on Slavery of the Rev. John Rankin, but they seem to have had a wide circulation, for about the year 1825 they had fallen into the hands of the Rev. Samuel J. May, living at the time in Brooklyn, Connecticut, and he had read them with interest.[902] In the second volume of the Liberator Garrison republished these letters, and in after years, on more than one occasion, he acknowledged himself the "disciple" of their author.[903]

The outspoken courage characteristic of the new phase into which the anti-slavery cause passed in 1830 helped to increase the resistance made in the North to the law for the rendition of fugitive slaves. The sympathy with the slave now became vocal in various centres, and made itself heard among the blacks of the South through the passionate and unguarded utterances of their masters. The evidence gathered from surviving abolitionists in the states adjacent to the lakes shows an increased activity of the Underground Road during the decade 1830-1840. The removal of the Indians from the Gulf states and the consequent opening of vast cotton-fields during the period named led many slaves to flee from the danger of transportation to the far South.[904] Under these circumstances pursuits of runaways became more frequent, and were often marked by a display of anger on the part of the pursuing party easily accounted for by the anti-slavery agitation in the free states. Open interference and rescues in which both negroes and whites took part became more common.[905] Many persons of respectability, more courageous than the great majority of their class at that time, not only enrolled themselves in the new anti-slavery societies, but made it a part of their duty to engage in the defence of fugitive slaves. Salmon P. Chase often served as counsel for the captured runaway during this period, and soon gained for himself the unenvied title of "attorney-general for fugitive slaves."[906] Other men of talents, position and education were not behind the rising Ohioan in their protection of the refugee. A formal organization of Underground Railroad workers, with Robert Purvis as president, was effected at Philadelphia in 1838. It is evident that the Underground Railroad was now developing with rapidity. The conditions prevailing in the North and South during the decade 1840-1850 were not less favorable to the escape of slaves, and, in one particular, were more favorable; the decision in the Prigg case in 1842 took away much of the effectiveness of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, and thus made pursuit little less than useless.

About four years before this historic decision was declared, that is to say, in December, 1838, John Calhoun, of Kentucky, sought to introduce a resolution in the House looking towards an enactment making it unlawful for any person to aid fugitive slaves in escaping from their owners, and another making it unlawful for any person in the non-slaveholding states to entice slaves from their owners, the prosecution of offenders against these proposed laws to take place in the courts of the United States. Objections were made to the introduction of these resolutions, and Mr. Calhoun was prevented from getting a reference of the matter to the Committee on the Judiciary by a vote of 107 to 89.[907] When the Prigg decision came, its political significance was quickly shown in the passage of laws by various Northern states forbidding their officers from performing the duties imposed by the act of 1793. From 1842 to 1850, Massachusetts, Vermont, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island passed such laws, and Connecticut, while repealing an earlier law on her statute books as being at the time unconstitutional, retained the portion of it that restrained state officers from assisting in the execution of the act.

In the meantime the Southern leaders did not fail to note the progress of anti-slavery sentiment north of Mason and Dixon's line. This was not less manifest in the formation of the Liberty party in the early years of the decade 1840-1850, than in the legislative and other opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law. Indeed, so marked an impression had been made upon the minds and sympathies of anti-slavery men by the brave and successful flight of slaves, that a Liberty convention at Peterboro, New York, in January, 1842, issued an address to slaves, declaring that slavery was to be "tortured even unto death," advising them to seek liberty by flight, and assuring them that the abolitionist knew no more grateful employment than that of helping escaping slaves to Canada. In August of the following year the national convention of the new party, comprising nearly a thousand delegates from all the free states except New Hampshire, made the disavowal of the fugitive recovery clause of the Constitution a part of the party platform, voting by a decisive majority "to regard and treat the third clause of the Constitution, whenever applied to the case of a fugitive slave, as utterly null and void; and consequently as forming no part of the Constitution of the United States whenever we are called upon or sworn to support it."[908] About the time of the announcement of this principle, Mr. Garrison issued in behalf of the American Anti-Slavery Society an address to the bondmen of the South, in which they were promised deliverance from their chains, and were encouraged to run away from their masters. "If you come to us, and are hungry," ran the address, "we will feed you; if thirsty, we will give you drink; if naked, we will clothe you; if sick, we will minister to your necessities; if in prison, we will visit you; if you need a hiding-place from the face of the pursuer, we will provide one that even bloodhounds will not scent out."[909]

Such open attacks upon the property rights of planters and slave-traders must have been extremely aggravating to Southerners, and, of course, contributed to bring the question of a more effective Fugitive Slave Law again under the consideration of Congress, notwithstanding the fact that a large share of that body's attention was occupied during the period from 1844 to 1848 with matters connected with the annexation of Texas, the Mexican War and the settlement of the Oregon boundary dispute. In 1847 the legislature of Kentucky presented a petition to Congress urging the importance of new laws so framed as to enable the citizens of slaveholding states to reclaim their negroes when they had absconded into the free states. This resulted in a bill reported in the Senate, but the bill never got beyond its second reading. Two years later an attempt was made in the House to secure legislation for the same object, but the committee to whom the matter was referred seems never to have reported.

At intervals more or less frequent, during a period of more than fifty years, the South had been demanding of Congress adequate protection for its human property against the depredations of those Northerners who rejoiced in the work of secret emancipation. The efforts of the slaveholding section for a stricter fugitive recovery law had uniformly failed down to 1850, and it seems altogether likely that the success won in the year named would not have been realized,[910] if a bill intended to meet the needs of slave-owners had not been made an essential part of the great scheme of compromise for the adjustment of the differences threatening the perpetuity of the Union at the time.[911] The measure that was finally adopted, as a part of the programme of compromise, was one introduced into the Senate by Mr. Mason, of Virginia, in the early part of the first session of the Thirty-first Congress. It was aimed, said its author, at evils "more deeply seated and widely extended than those" his colleague recognized. "The state from whence I came," continued Mr. Mason, "and the states of Kentucky and Maryland, being those states of the Union that border on the free states, have had ample experience, not only of the difficulties, but of the actual impossibility of reclaiming a fugitive when he once gets within the boundaries of a non-slaveholding state."[912] Henry Clay, the author of the Compromise, whose disposition had been to lean to the Northern rather than to the Southern side of the general controversy, expressed the irritation of his own state, Kentucky, when he said concerning the question of fugitive slaves: "Upon this subject I do think that we have just and serious cause of complaint against the free States. I think they have failed in fulfilling a great obligation, and the failure is precisely upon one of those subjects which in its nature is most irritating and inflammatory to those who live in slave States.... It is our duty to make the law more effective; and I shall go with the senator from the South who goes furthest in making penal laws and imposing the heaviest sanctions for the recovery of fugitive slaves and the restoration of them to their owners."[913] Delaware and Missouri had grievances similar to those of Kentucky and other border states. The region constituted by these states suffered heavy losses through the operations of the Underground Railroad.[914]

That the cotton states also lost considerable property every year by the escape of slaves to the North appears from a statement of Senator Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi: "Negroes do escape from Mississippi frequently," he said, "and the boats constantly passing by our long line of river frontier furnish great facility to get into Ohio; and when they do escape it is with great difficulty that they are recovered; indeed, it seldom occurs that they are restored. We, though less than the border states, are seriously concerned in this question.... Those who, like myself, live on that great highway of the West—the Mississippi River—and are most exposed, have a present and increasing interest in the matter. We desire laws that shall be effective, and at the same time within the constitutional power of Congress; such as shall be adequate, and be secured by penalties the most stringent which can be imposed."[915] Calhoun admitted that discontent was universal in the South, and declared that conciliation could only come when the North consented to meet certain conditions, one of which was the restoration of fugitive slaves.

Many of the speeches contained suggestions and prophecies of disunion. One of these, made by Pratt, of Maryland, called the attention of the Senate to a recent address delivered by Mr. Seward, of New York, before an assembly of Ohioans, in which he urged them to "extend a cordial welcome to the fugitive who lays his weary limbs at your door, and defend him as you would your household gods."[916] Another made by Yulee, of Florida, informed the Senate of a convention then sitting at Cazenovia, New York, attended by more than thirty runaway slaves, and held for the purpose of devising ways and means of escape for blacks. The language of the address to slaves issued by the convention was not calculated to reassure slave-owners. In part it ran: "Including our children, we number here in Canada 20,000 souls. The population in the free States are, with few exceptions, the fugitive slave's friends.

"We are poor. We can do little more for your deliverance than pray to God for it. We will furnish you with pocket compasses, and in the dark nights you can run away. We cannot furnish you with weapons; some of us are not inclined to carry arms; but if you can get them, take them, and, before you go back into bondage, use them, if you are obliged to take life. The slaveholders would not hesitate to kill you, rather than not take you back into bondage.

"Numerous as the escapes from slavery are, they would still be more so, were it not for the master's protection of the rights of property. You even hesitate to take the slowest of his horses; but we say take the fastest. Pack up provisions and clothes; and either get a key, or force the lock, and get his money and start."[917] In view of such proceedings, openly conducted without hindrance, the Senator appealed to his auditors and to the country to consider whether "this Union can long continue?"[918]

In his famous 7th-of-March speech, Webster freely admitted that the complaints of the South in regard to the non-rendition of fugitive slaves were just, and that the North had fallen short of her duty. He therefore decided to support Mason's Fugitive Slave Bill, although he wanted it amended in certain particulars, and sought especially to have in it a clause securing trial by jury to the refugee in case he denied owing service to the claimant. He criticised the abolition societies of the North, and said he thought their operations for the last twenty years had produced "nothing good or valuable." The press of the South he found to be as violent as that of the other section. There was, he decided, "no solid grievance presented by the South within the redress of the government, ... but the want of a proper regard to the injunction of the Constitution for the delivery of fugitive slaves."[919]

Under the combined championship of Webster, Clay and Calhoun, and to bring about better feeling between the two parts of the country, which in the eyes of many contemporaries seemed on the verge of splitting asunder, the new Fugitive Slave Law was passed by the Senate, August 26, 1850, and by the House a few days later. By the signature of President Fillmore the measure became a law, September 18.

The vote by which the new law had been passed through the two Houses of Congress did not betoken a disposition at the North to meet the obligations it imposed upon that section. Only three of the senators representing free states voted for the measure. These were Dodge and Jones, of Indiana, and Sturgeon, of Pennsylvania. Among the one hundred and thirty-six members from the Northern states in the House, only thirty-one voted with the slaveholders. Three of the thirty-one were Whigs, the rest Democrats.[920] Jefferson Davis showed that he comprehended the true situation when he said, during the following session of Congress, that the history of the law proved that it would not furnish the needed security, because the Northern majority did not pass the bill, but merely allowed the Southern minority to pass it, and because the measure had to be executed in the North.[921] This view of the case seems not to have been taken by those representing the border slave states. The comprehensive character of Clay's scheme was favorable to the incorporation in it of a measure stringent enough to suit the most aggrieved without exciting the opposition such a measure would have called out if presented by itself.

Whatever the expectations of the various slaveholding states with regard to the recovery of their runaways under the new law, Joshua R. Giddings, himself an enthusiastic agent of the Underground Railroad and a better judge of the real convictions of the North than Webster, took the earliest occasion to give utterance to the sentiments of the people upon whom depended the success or failure of the law of 1850. Giddings did not delay, nor did he mince matters. In the earliest days of the session following that in which the compromise had been passed he denounced the Fugitive Slave Law and predicted its failure. Concerning the citizens of his own state, he said: "The freemen of Ohio will never turn out to chase the panting fugitive. They will never be metamorphosed into bloodhounds, to track him to his hiding-place, and seize and drag him out, and deliver him to his tormentors. Rely upon it they will die first.... Let no man tell me there is no higher law than this fugitive bill. We feel there is a law of right, of justice, of freedom, implanted in the breast of every intelligent human being, that bids him look with scorn upon this libel on all that is called law."[922]

That slave-owners counted on deriving benefits from the law appears from the great number of attempts at once made to reclaim runaways, and the frequent prosecutions of those guilty of facilitating their escape. The period sometimes designated the "era of slave-hunting" began in the North. Slave-owners and their agents entered vigorously upon the chase, and a larger number of communities in the free states than ever before were invaded by men engaged in the disgusting business of capturing blacks, intelligent and ambitious enough to seek their own liberty. Villages, towns and cities from Iowa to Maine, but especially in the middle states, witnessed scenes calculated to awaken the popular detestation of slavery as it had never been awakened before. Pitiable distress fell upon the fugitive settlers in the North and did much to quicken consciences everywhere. The capture of a fugitive in the place where he had been living invariably caused an outburst of indignation; and if the victim were not rescued before his removal by his captors a sum of money was raised if possible, and his freedom was purchased if that could be done. All of these circumstances contributed to increase the traffic along the numerous and tortuous lines of the Underground Railroad, which, according to the testimony of surviving abolitionists, did its most thriving business in all parts of the North during the decade from 1850 to 1860. The marked increase in the number of negroes seeking aid on their way to Canada at the outset of this period was due to the flight of many of the fugitive settlers from their accustomed haunts in the free states; but the supply later on must be attributed to the ease of communication through various channels by which slaves were every day learning of the body of abolitionists eager to help them to freedom. The readiness of the Northern people to act in opposition to the law arose from their abhorrence of a measure that they considered unrighteous and cruel, and from their resentment at the requirement that they must join in the hunt, so that the fugitive might be promptly enslaved.[923] The wide-spread opposition to the law led to prosecutions of underground workers in various places, and these prosecutions greatly helped to keep the slavery question before the attention of the country, despite the wishes and endeavors of the politicians who strove to silence the issue.[924]

The record of the year 1851 illustrates the character of the general contest, which had already set in before the enactment of the new law, but which assumed thenceforth an importance it had never had before. Early in the year Shadrach was seized in Boston, carried before the commissioner, and remanded to custody, but was rescued by a crowd of negroes and hurried off to Canada. Later Sims was caught and confined in the court-house until he was marched to Long Wharf under guard of three hundred policemen. William and Ellen Craft, fugitives from Georgia, were tracked to Boston, but, aided by Theodore Parker and other faithful friends, succeeded in escaping to England. Other notable instances of pursuit occurred at Chicago, Illinois, Poughkeepsie, New York, and Westchester and Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania. At Philadelphia a free negro was arrested, proved a slave by perjured testimony and taken to Maryland; fortunately he gained his liberty again by the refusal of the planter to whom he was delivered to identify him as his lost property. At Buffalo an alleged fugitive was released on writ of habeas corpus by Judge Conkling. At the hearing that followed the lack of evidence caused the judge to discharge the prisoner, and he was soon in Canada. In the attempt of the Maryland slave-owner, Gorsuch, and his party, to recover certain runaway slaves from Christiana, Pennsylvania, Gorsuch was killed and his son seriously wounded, while the fugitives managed to escape. This affair caused intense excitement, not only in Pennsylvania, but throughout the country. Another case resulting in the death of one of the parties concerned grew out of the kidnapping of a free negro girl from the house of a Mr. Miller, in Nottingham, Pennsylvania; Miller succeeded in rescuing the girl, but he was mysteriously murdered before he reached home. Near the close of the year 1851 Jerry McHenry was arrested in Syracuse, New York, while an agricultural fair and a convention of the Liberty party were in progress in that city. The attempted escape and the recapture of the negro wrought up the crowd to a state of intense feeling, which was not relieved until the fugitive was rescued and sent to Canada.[925] There were many other instances in which communities were given the opportunity to show their spirit in the defence of helpless bondmen.

The political leaders and the administration, who were responsible for the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law, were not willing to see its provisions thus trampled under foot. Upon the reassembling of Congress in December, 1850, President Fillmore expressed himself in his message as pleased with the compromise measures, although, he admitted, they had not yet realized their purpose fully. "It would be strange," he said, "if they had been received with immediate approbation by people and states prejudiced and heated by the exciting controversies of their representatives." He nevertheless had faith that the various enactments would be generally sustained. The tinge of doubt in the communication of the President pretty certainly referred to the fierce denunciations of the Fugitive Slave Law recently uttered by mass-meetings in various parts of the Northern states, and to several cases of resistance where the execution of the law had been attempted. His reassuring expressions voiced his own hope and that of the political magnates; and he meant also, perhaps, to carry assurance to the South. Some balm seemed necessary, for the Georgia convention in accepting the compromise as a "permanent adjustment of the sectional controversy," voted, "That it is the deliberate opinion of this convention that upon the faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Bill by the proper authorities depends the preservation of our much-loved Union."[926]

The open resistance to the law upon several occasions in 1851 brought opportunities to the administration to exert itself in favor of the faithful execution of the law. After the rescue of Shadrach from the United States marshal on February 15, much excitement existed, especially at the centre of government. The President immediately issued a proclamation commanding all civil and military officers, and calling on all good citizens, to "aid in quelling this and similar combinations" and to assist in capturing the persons that had set the law at defiance. The Senate, after debate, adopted a resolution requesting the President to lay before it information relating to the rescue, and inquiring whether further legislation was desirable. This request was promptly complied with by the executive. Then Clay, the author of the resolution, urged that the President be invested with extraordinary power to enforce the law, but failed to gain substantial support for his proposition. In the meantime five of the rescuers of Shadrach were indicted and tried, but owing to the disagreement of the jury none of them were convicted. The energetic action of the administration and its supporters had apparently accomplished no result, except to demonstrate the difficulties with which the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act was encompassed.

The same lesson was taught in two important instances toward the end of this year, when the government undertook to carry the law into effect. The Gorsuch tragedy at Christiana, Pennsylvania, led the President to order the United States marshal, district attorney and commissioner from Philadelphia, with forty-five United States marines from the navy-yard, to assist in arresting those supposed to have been engaged in the fight. The fugitives had escaped and could not be recovered, but a number of other persons, most of whom were colored, were arrested, taken to Philadelphia, and indicted for treason. But the efforts of the authorities to convict were unavailing, and the prisoners went scot free.[927]

Within a few days after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in September of the previous year, the spirit of resistance in Syracuse, New York, had manifested itself in public meetings at which the law was denounced and a Vigilance Committee organized.[928] In the early part of June following, Daniel Webster, who was travelling extensively through the Northern states and exerting his personal and official influence to secure obedience to the law, visited Syracuse and made a speech. In the course of his remarks he insisted in no conciliatory terms that the law must be enforced. He said, "Those persons in this city who mean to oppose the execution of the Fugitive Slave Law are traitors! traitors!! traitors!!! This law ought to be obeyed, and it will be enforced—yes, it shall be enforced, and that, too, in the midst of the next anti-slavery convention, if then there shall be any occasion to enforce it."

As if in fulfillment of this prediction of the Secretary of State, on October 1, 1851, a day when a convention of the Liberty party was in progress, an attempt was made to capture one Jerry McHenry, an undoubted fugitive; but the Vigilance Committee, under efficient leadership, succeeded in rescuing him out of the hands of his captors. At this outcome there was much exultation among the anti-slavery people, as also when later the prosecution instituted against eighteen of the rescuers ended in a failure to convict. It is worthy of note that Seward was the first to sign the bond of those indicted; and that Gerrit Smith, then a member of Congress, made a defiant speech in the fall of 1852 in Canandaigua, where the trial of one of the rescuers was going on.[929]

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.

Such incidents, together with the aggravation caused by the removal of fugitives successfully seized, made it plain that the compromise was not the "finality" that the politicians declared it to be; and that the Whig and Democratic parties chose to decree it in their national platforms in the summer of 1852. The principles of political opposition determined by the conditions of the time were uttered by the convention of the Free Soil party, with which many of the underground operators were now allied, in the words: "No more slave states, no more slave territories, no nationalized slavery, and no national legislation for the extradition of slaves." The issue of the presidential campaign in the election of Pierce, a compromise Democrat, marks only a temporary disturbance in the progress of sentiment, due to the desire of the country to have rest, the disinclination of many Whigs to support their own candidate, General Winfield Scott, and the policy of acquiescence he represented; and the solidarity of action among the Democrats, who were generally satisfied both with their principles and their candidate.

As it was the Fugitive Slave Law that brought the North face to face with slavery nationalized, so it was the Fugitive Slave Law that occasioned, in the spring of 1852, the production of Uncle Tom's Cabin, a novel the great political significance of which has been generally acknowledged. The observations and experience that made possible for Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe the writing of this remarkable book were gained by her while living at Cincinnati, where she was enabled to study the effects of slavery. While thus a resident on the borders of Kentucky, she numbered among her friends slaveholders on the one side of the Ohio River and abolitionists on the other. At the time of her first trip across the Ohio in 1833, she visited an estate, which is described as that of Colonel Shelby in Uncle Tom's Cabin.[930] Her associations and sympathies brought home to her the personal aspects of slavery, and her house on Walnut Hills early become a station on the Underground Railroad, remaining so doubtless till 1850, when she removed with her husband, Professor Calvin Stowe, to Brunswick, Maine.

During the intervening years she was unconsciously gleaning incidents and scenes and discovering characters for her future book. The woful experiences of her midnight visitors, whose hunger for freedom rose superior to every other need, awoke her deepest compassion, and the neighborhood in which she lived, nay, even her own household, supplied the circumstances and adventures depicted in the lives of some of her most admirable characters. Mrs. Stowe herself declared Uncle Tom's Cabin to be "a collection and arrangement of real incidents,—of actions really performed, of words and expressions really uttered,—grouped together with reference to a general result, in the same manner that the mosaic artist groups his fragments of various stones into one general picture."[931] For example she points out that the service of Senator Bird in the incident of the novel in which Eliza escapes from her pursuers Tom Locker and Marks had its counterpart in the service rendered a negro girl in her own employ by Professor Stowe and his brother-in-law, Henry Ward Beecher, in 1839. This girl was secretly conveyed northward by her escorts a distance of twelve miles to the house of John Van Zandt, another station-keeper of the Underground Road; and Van Zandt it was who "performed the good deed which the author in her story ascribes to Van Tromp."[932] Concerning the leading Quaker character in her book Mrs. Stowe says: "The character of Rachel Halliday was a real one, but she has passed away to her reward. Simeon Halliday, calmly risking fine and imprisonment for his love to God and man, has had in this country many counterparts among the sect. The writer had in mind, at the time of writing, the scenes in the trial of Thomas Garet, of Wilmington, Delaware, for the crime of hiring a hack to convey a mother and four children from Newcastle jail to Wilmington, a distance of five miles."[933] The thrilling adventures of Eliza in escaping across the Ohio River with her child in her arms as the ice was breaking up was an actual occurrence that took place fifty miles above Cincinnati, at Ripley, an initial station of an important underground route.[934]

By the combination of such elements under the crystallizing influence of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Mrs. Stowe made her story. Intent on having the people of the North understand what the "system" was, about which so many seemed apathetic, she set to work in response to appeals to her to take up her pen. The result, wholly unexpected, was the production of a book that did for the whole population of the free states what the Underground Railroad had been doing for a part only: the author made real the sin of slavery to the consciences of freemen, by an object-lesson in the possible evils of slavery and the desire of the slave to be free. In Harriet Beecher Stowe the thousands of fugitive slaves that had been unwittingly acting as missionaries in the cause of freedom through the earlier years found at last a champion whose words carried their touching story to the multitudes. The disheartening circumstances under which her novel had been composed and the exhausted condition in which the author found herself at its conclusion did not permit her to look for anything but the failure of her undertaking. As she finished the last proof-sheets "it seemed to her that there was no hope; that nobody would hear, nobody would read, nobody would pity; that this frightful system, which had already pursued its victims into the free States, might at last even threaten them in Canada."[935] But the success of the book was immediate. Three thousand copies were sold on the first day of publication, and more than three hundred thousand in this country within the year.[936]

The political effect of the novel has been disparaged by a few writers, because it did not cause anti-slavery gains in the national election occurring in the fall of 1852. Thus George Ticknor wrote in December of that year, "It deepens the horror of servitude, but it does not affect a single vote."[937] This was certainly true, for the mass of Northerners were resting in the belief that a substantial political settlement had been reached in the great compromise. It was not to be expected that this belief, which was the outcome of weeks of strenuous discussion, was to be easily tossed aside under the emotional stimulus of a novel. The immediate effect of Uncle Tom's Cabin as a political agency lay in the renewal on a vast scale of the consideration of the question of slavery, which the compromise had been thought by so many to have settled. Its remote effect, which did not show itself until the latter part of the decade 1850-1860 has been best explained by the historian, James Ford Rhodes. This writer says, "The mother's opinion was a potent factor in politics between 1852 and 1860, and boys in their teens in the one year were voters in the other. It is often remarked that previous to the war the Republican party attracted the great majority of school-boys, and that the first voters were an important factor in its final success; ... the youth of America whose first ideas on slavery were formed by reading Uncle Tom's Cabin were ready to vote with the party whose existence was based on opposition to an extension of the great evil."[938] They were also ready to fight for the cause of union and of freedom in 1861.

Soon after the publication of Mrs. Stowe's book, Sumner began his movement in the Senate to secure the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law. In May, 1852, he presented a memorial from the Society of Friends in New England, asking for its repeal;[939] in July he offered a resolution instructing the Committee on Judiciary to report a bill for this purpose;[940] and in August he sought to secure his end by proposing an amendment to the civil and diplomatic appropriations bill.[941] In the speech made at the time he presented this amendment, a speech said to rank with that of Webster on the Compromise in 1850 in the popular interest it aroused, Sumner pointed to the example of Washington, who let one of his slaves remain unmolested in New Hampshire rather than "excite a mob or riot, or even uneasy sensations in the minds of well-disposed citizens." The execution of the Fugitive Slave Law, he asked Congress to note, involved mobs, cruelty and violence everywhere its enforcement was tried. The wonderful reception given Uncle Tom's Cabin was, he thought, an expression of the true public sentiment. "A woman, inspired by Christian genius, enters the lists, like another Joan of Arc, and with marvellous powers sweeps the chords of the popular heart. Now melting to tears, and now inspiring to rage, her work everywhere touches the conscience, and makes the slave-hunter more hateful."[942] He saw the import of the appeal of fugitive slaves to Northern communities for protection and liberty. "For them every sentiment of humanity is aroused. Rude and ignorant they may be, but in their very efforts for freedom they claim kindred with all that is noble in the past. Romance has no stories of more thrilling interest; classical antiquity has preserved no examples of adventure and trial more worthy of renown. They are among the heroes of our age. Among them are those whose names will be treasured in the annals of their race. By eloquent voice they have done much to make their wrongs known, and to secure the respect of the world. History will soon lend her avenging pen. Proscribed by you during life, they will proscribe you through all time. Sir, already judgment is beginning; a righteous public sentiment palsies your enactment."[943]

Through his denunciation of the law, his justification of those who aided the fugitive, and his recognition of the power of the fugitive's appeal, Sumner may be said to have become the representative and spokesman in the Senate of fugitive slaves and their Northern friends. How closely he identified himself with their cause is indicated by his determined efforts to secure the repeal of the obnoxious law, efforts repeated in July, 1854, and February, 1855, and carried by him to a successful issue in 1864.[944]

The action of public sentiment in the Northern states, which, he said, palsied the Fugitive Slave Law, was accompanied, during the decade from 1850 to 1860, by tokens of open violation of the law, defiant resolutions adopted by mass-meetings, and obstructional legislation passed by various free states; the spirit of nullification was thus aroused in many localities north of Mason and Dixon's line. The demands of character and humanity had long been obeyed by many men and women for whom any compromise involving the continuance in slavery of their fellow-men was a dreadful crime. These persons had refused to yield obedience to that statute which in their belief was subversive of the "higher law." Under the action of causes that have been discussed in earlier chapters, the sentiment that had developed the secret and illicit traffic along numerous lines of the Underground Railroad became more obtrusive and less regardful of congressional legislation. Besides participating in the public and legitimate activities of anti-slavery societies, and sharing in the organization of the Liberty and Free Soil parties, the abolitionists formed vigilance committees in various communities, the avowed purpose of which was to thwart the Fugitive Slave Act; and while these bodies held their meetings in secret and guarded the names of their members, it was often a matter of common report in those localities that certain well-known men of the neighborhood were active members. It was the Vigilance Committee of Syracuse that rescued Jerry McHenry from custody of the officers, in the presence of a great crowd; and the leaders in the affair, Gerrit Smith, Charles A. Wheaton and Samuel J. May, far from seeking oblivion, published an acknowledgment in the newspapers that they had aided all they could in the rescue of Jerry, were ready for trial, and would rest their defence on the "unconstitutionality and extreme wickedness" of the Fugitive Slave Law. None of these men were tried. The citizens of Onondaga County held a mass-convention in approval of the liberation of the negro, and unanimously adopted resolutions justifying and applauding the act.[945]

From this time on till the outbreak of the Civil War bold and open opposition to the authority of the federal law is a purpose not to be mistaken or overlooked. The state reports of the Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Anti-Slavery societies boasted of the steadily increasing numbers of fugitives aided by abolitionists at many centres, and heaped reproaches on the judges and commissioners that gave decisions adverse to runaways.[946] Fugitive slave cases were stubbornly contested in the courts on the ground that the law of 1850 was unconstitutional. The series of cases in which the law was subjected to the penetrating criticism of some of the ablest lawyers in the country is a long and interesting one; nothing in the history of the times more clearly shows the effect of the Underground Railroad in rousing ever-widening indignation at the hunt for fugitives.[947]

In the spring of 1854 two cases, one in Wisconsin and the other in Massachusetts, served to show the pitch to which the spirit of resistance among the most responsible citizens could rise in both the West and the East. On March 10, 1854, Joshua Glover, who was living near Racine, Wisconsin, was arrested as a fugitive slave by United States deputy marshals and the claimant, B. W. Garland, of St. Louis. After a severe struggle Glover was knocked down, placed in a wagon, driven to Milwaukee, and there lodged in jail. The news of the capture reached Racine in a few hours, and a popular meeting, larger than ever before held in the town, assembled on the court-house square to take action. At this meeting it was resolved to secure Glover a fair trial in Wisconsin; and it was voted, "That inasmuch as the Senate of the United States has repealed all compromises adopted by the Congress of the United States,[948] we, as citizens of Wisconsin, are justified in declaring, and do declare, the slave-catching law of 1850 disgraceful and also repealed." This was but one of many nullifying resolutions adopted about this time in various parts of the North, although most of the resolutions were somewhat less extreme in statement.[949]

At an afternoon meeting the deliberations ended in the decision of about a hundred citizens of Racine to take boat at once for Milwaukee. Upon arrival this delegation found the latter city in an uproar. A meeting of five thousand persons had already appointed a Committee of Vigilance to see that Glover had a fair trial, and this demonstration had led the authorities to call for the local militia to preserve order; but the militia did not appear. Such was now the temper of the crowd that it could be satisfied with nothing less than the immediate release of the prisoner. Glover was therefore demanded, but, as he was not forthcoming, the jail door was battered in, the negro brought out, placed in a wagon and forwarded to Canada by the Underground Railroad. The act of the rescuers was indorsed by the public sentiment of the state; with but few exceptions justified by the newspapers. Among the resolutions passed by mass-meetings held to take action against the Kansas-Nebraska bill, then pending in Congress, there was usually one thanking the rescuers for their conduct.

Remembering with satisfaction the deliverance of Jerry, a special convention assembled at Syracuse, New York, on March 22, 1854, and sent a congratulatory message to Milwaukee and Racine, offering to join them and all the sister cities of the North in a "holy confederacy, which ... shall swear that no broken-hearted fugitive shall ever again be consigned to slavery from the North, under the accursed act of 1850." A state convention met at Milwaukee, April 13 and 14, which was attended by delegates from all the populated districts. This assembly adopted a number of resolutions, several of which were quotations from the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, including the famous one declaring "that, as in other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions, as of the mode and measure of redress." The Fugitive Slave Law was pronounced unconstitutional, and aid was promised the rescuers of Glover.

It is interesting to note that at this convention a state league was also formed, which has been called a forerunner of the Republican party in Wisconsin.

The Supreme Court of the state was soon given an opportunity to place itself on record with regard to the validity of the federal law. The case of one of the rescuers, Sherman M. Booth, came before it for decision. In passing judgment the court showed itself to be in line with the sentiment of the state, for it declared the act of 1850 unconstitutional; the principal grounds assigned were the absence of congressional power to legislate on the subject of the surrender of fugitives from labor, the improper conferring of judicial authority upon commissioners, and the viciousness of depriving a person of his liberty 'without due process of law.' Booth was, of course, discharged. But the matter was not dropped here. The United States District Court now obtained jurisdiction of the case; the jury found the prisoner guilty, and the judge sentenced him to imprisonment for one month, and to pay a fine of $1,000 and the costs of prosecution—in all, $1,451. The news of the conviction caused great excitement; denunciatory meetings were again the order of the day; and money was subscribed for the further defence of the prisoners. Some of the resolutions passed at this time did not stop short of asserting the readiness of the people to maintain their cause with the bayonet. Application was made to the Supreme Court of the state for a writ of habeas corpus, and Booth, together with a colleague, Rycraft, was again released.

The controversy now came before the Supreme Court at Washington, and on petition of the Attorney-General a writ of error was granted by that tribunal to be served on the Supreme Court of Wisconsin. The state court, however, refused to obey this writ. At length, on March 6, 1857, the United States Supreme Court assumed jurisdiction, in an unusual way, acting on the basis of a certified copy of proceedings, which did not appear upon the official record. At the December term, 1858, the judgment of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin was reversed, and that court was directed to return Booth into federal custody. Again the state court would not yield obedience. Booth was therefore rearrested by the United States marshal, March 1, 1860, and was confined in the custom-house at Milwaukee. The friends of the prisoner once more applied to the state Supreme Court for a writ of habeas corpus, but, failing to get it on account of a change in the personnel of the court, they did not rest until they had rescued him from the government prison five months later. On October 8 Booth was again arrested, and this time he remained in prison until, under the pressure brought to bear upon President Buchanan, he was pardoned just before Lincoln's inauguration.[950]

Notwithstanding the obstinacy of the highest state court in refusing to carry out the commands of the highest United States court, the decision rendered by the latter in Booth's case was of great importance. It clearly defined for the first time the limits of state authority and disclosed the powerlessness of state courts to override the jurisdiction granted to the federal courts by the Constitution of the United States.

The people of Wisconsin, however, were unwilling to recognize this fact. Having enacted a personal liberty law in 1857, they made Byron Paine, a young lawyer, who had taken a prominent part in the defence of Booth, their candidate in 1859 for associate justice of the Supreme Court, and elected him on a combined anti-slavery and state rights issue. Thus the state maintained its ground until the eve of the Civil War. Then it relinquished it to assist in coercing South Carolina and other Southern states from their secession, the right of which these states defended by the same doctrine of state sovereignty.[951]

The Glover rescue occurred while the Kansas-Nebraska Act was pending in Congress. The attempted rescue of Burns came just after this piece of legislation, already passed by the Senate, had been voted by the House. This measure, which set aside the Missouri Compromise prohibiting slavery from all the Louisiana territory lying north of 36° 30' north latitude, except that included within the State of Missouri, deeply stirred public feeling in the free states: thus the violence of the demonstrations in the Booth and Burns cases was in some measure a protest against Douglas legislation. Burns was arrested in Boston on May 24, 1854, under a warrant granted by the United States commissioner. He felt his case to be hopeless, and so told Richard H. Dana, Jr., and Theodore Parker; but they urged him to make a defence, and prevailed on the commissioner to postpone the hearing. Boston was soon ablaze with indignation kindled in part by the inflammatory handbills scattered broadcast by members of the Vigilance Committee. These handbills contained invectives against the "kidnapper," and expressed a sentiment prevalent in New England, as in other parts of the North, when they declared "the compromises trampled upon by the slave power when in the path of slavery are to be crammed down the throat of the North."

In response to messages from the Vigilance Committee Thomas Wentworth Higginson, A. Bronson Alcott and others hurried to Boston to consult with the leaders there on what was best to be done. A mass-meeting had been called for Friday evening, the 26th, to be held in Faneuil Hall, and it was now planned to make an attack, at the height of this meeting, on the court-house, where Burns was in durance, and "send the whole meeting pell-mell to Court Square, ready to fall in behind the leaders and bring out the slave." The city was in a state of wild excitement when the time for action came, and it was natural that in the confusion existing some of the arrangements should miscarry. The crowd that filled Faneuil Hall was so dense as to cut off all communication with the speakers on the platform, and prevented concerted action. When, under the impassioned oratory of Phillips, Parker and others, the audience had given evidences of its readiness to undertake the rescue, the announcement that an attack upon the court-house was about to begin was made from the rear of the hall, and it was proposed that the meeting should adjourn to Court Square. Phillips had not received notice of the project, and the other speakers had not fully comprehended it. The alarm was thought to be a scheme to break up the meeting and was not followed by the decisive action necessary to success.

Arriving at the court-house the crowd found a small party under the lead of Higginson, Stowell and a negro battering in a door with a stick of timber. Entrance was gained by a few only,—who found themselves in the hands of the police,—while the concourse outside was daunted at the outset by the mysterious killing of one of the marshal's deputies. The arrest of several of Higginson's companions followed, and a renewal of the assault, if there was any danger of such a thing, was prevented by the approach of two companies of artillery and two more of marines ordered out by the mayor to preserve the peace. Troops were retained at the court-house during the examination of Burns, and it is reported by an eye-witness that the seat of justice "had the air of a beleaguered fortress." On the 2d of June Commissioner Loring remanded the fugitive to slavery.

The presence in Boston of a multitude of visitors attracted thither by the annual meeting of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, the state convention of the Free Soil party, and the spring meetings of the religious bodies, as well as by the arrest of the negro, led the authorities to take all precautions to forestall any fresh attempt at rescue when the fugitive should be sent out of the city. Accordingly, over a thousand soldiers with loaded muskets, and furnished with a cannon loaded with grape-shot, were detailed to assist the city police and a large number of deputy marshals to carry out the law. In the procession that accompanied Burns to the United States revenue cutter, by which he was to be carried back to Virginia, there were four platoons of marines and a battalion of artillery, besides the marshal's civil posse of one hundred and twenty-five men. Fifty thousand people lined the streets along which this procession passed, and greeted it with hisses and groans, while over their heads were displayed many emblems of mourning and shame. It is little wonder that the Enquirer of Richmond, Virginia, commenting with satisfaction on the rendition of Burns, was led to add, "but a few more such victories and the South is undone."[952] Such was the state of public opinion in Massachusetts that the Board of Overseers of Harvard College declined to confirm the election of Commissioner Loring as a member of the Harvard faculty; and the people petitioned, until their request was granted, for his removal from the office of judge of probate.

Similar hostility to the Fugitive Slave Law existed in Illinois. John Reynolds, who had been governor of the state, wrote about 1855 that when President Jackson issued his proclamation in December, 1832, condemning nullification in South Carolina, the legislature of Illinois hailed it with gratification and pledged the state to sustain the executive in his purpose to enforce the federal laws at all hazards. Jackson's proclamation, he said, had a strong tendency to suppress the spirit of nullification throughout the Union. The law of 1850 had been framed in pursuance of the Constitution, and was hailed as the foundation of sectional peace and happiness, but "within a few years, a section of the State of Illinois, the city of Chicago, is not disposed to execute this act of Congress. The opposition in Illinois to this law is not extensive, but confined to a single city, so far as I know. Yet in that disaffected district the act is a dead letter...."[953] The number of centres in Illinois in which the act was disapproved and violated was far beyond the knowledge of ex-Governor Reynolds.

In Ohio incidents arising out of the operations of the Underground Railroad became the occasions for serious contests between the state and federal authorities. On May 15, 1857, the United States deputy marshal for southern Ohio, with nine assistants, entered the house of Udney Hyde, near Mechanicsburg, Champaign County, in pursuit of a fugitive slave. The approach of the posse had been observed by the negro, who took refuge in Hyde's garret. Some firing was done by both the negro and the marshal, with the result that the officer and his party were glad to take their positions outside of the house. Here they were soon found by a crowd of citizens from the neighboring town, whose sympathies were so unmistakably with the fugitive that the pursuers decided to leave without delay. Returning twelve days later, they were told that the fugitive, Addison White, had gone to Canada. Thereupon they arrested several persons in the neighborhood on the charge of aiding a slave to escape, and set off with these persons ostensibly for Urbana, where the examination was to be held.

Instead of going to Urbana, the party took a southern course through Clark and Green counties. The sheriff of Clark County, who organized a company to give chase, overtook the marshal and his men, and received at their hands a severe beating. Bands of angry citizens now scoured the country, and, at length, after a skirmish locally known as "the battle of Lumbarton," captured the marshal's posse. On the charge of assault with intent to kill, the prisoners were placed in jail at Springfield. This action occasioned a serious clash between the United States District Court for the southern district of Ohio and the state courts; and the federal tribunal asserted its jurisdiction by releasing the marshal's posse, although in the decision rendered it was admitted that there "was a question whether the marshal had not exceeded authority in the use of unnecessary force."

So critical had the situation now become that Governor Chase determined to have a personal conference with President Buchanan and the Secretary of State, General Cass. The Governor therefore sent an officer of his staff to Washington to arrange for the meeting, and to say to the Secretary of State that Mr. Chase "was as earnest in support of the authority of the federal government, legitimately exercised, as he was in support of the authority of the state; but that he should feel compelled to protect the state officials in the exercise of their duties, and the state courts in the exercise of their legitimate functions, if it took every man in the state to do it." In order to adjust the existing differences before they culminated in open hostility between the two governments, it was proposed on the part of Mr. Chase that the United States district attorney at Cincinnati be instructed to drop all suits against citizens of the state, with the understanding that a similar course be followed by the state with regard to the marshal and his deputies. At the formal meeting this was the plan adopted. Thus the affair was amicably settled, although it did not fail to leave a deep impression on the public mind, and to evoke comments from the press indicative of the restiveness of the abolitionists under the jurisdiction of United States courts in fugitive slave cases.[954]

Another example of open violation of the Slave Law, which resulted in conflict between the federal and state courts, exists in the famous Oberlin-Wellington rescue case. On September 13, 1858, two slave-catchers, provided with the necessary papers, and accompanied by the proper officers, arrested a runaway near the town of Oberlin, in which he had been living for more than two years. News of the capture was brought to Oberlin by two young men, who saw the negro in the hands of his captors as they were proceeding toward Wellington. A large crowd of men, among whom were several students and a professor of Oberlin College, took the trail of the slave-catchers, found them at Wellington, and without violence freed the slave. The arrest of a large number of the rescuers followed, and their arraignment took place before the United States District Court at Cleveland. Public sentiment was clearly with the prisoners, and their counsel were men of high rank in their profession. Two of the offenders were tried and convicted. On account of the state of feeling at the time, the legal proceedings were denounced as political trials. Mass-meetings were held throughout eastern Ohio to express the sympathy of the people with the rescuers, and to cast odium on the federal courts. The Dred Scott decision, recently rendered by the Supreme Court at Washington, called down upon that tribunal much condemnation. At an immense mass-convention held in Cleveland, May 24, 1859, resolutions were adopted, which accepted the compact theory of government voiced in the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, declared the equal right of each party to the compact "to judge for itself, as well of infractions, as of the mode and measure of redress," and declared the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 to be void because, "in the opinion of this assembly, passed by Congress in the exercise of powers improperly assumed."[955] A fund denominated "the Fund of Liberty" was created, to be applied in defence of the Oberlin rescuers, and a committee was appointed to take action for the release of those persons.

Meanwhile the grand jury of Lorain County—the county in which the fugitive had been seized—had indicted four of the slave-catchers under a personal liberty law passed by Ohio in 1857.[956] This procedure led to negotiations, which finally terminated in a compromise between the executors and the opponents of the Fugitive Slave Act. On the one hand the United States authorities agreed to stop prosecution in the remaining rescue cases, while on the other hand the Lorain County people consented to dismiss the suits against the so-called kidnappers. This conclusion of the matter was regarded as a victory for the "higher law" by the friends of the Oberlin parties, and the release of the prisoners was heralded in Cleveland by the firing of a hundred guns. Their return to Oberlin was signalized by a celebration in their honor. The Cleveland Plain Dealer said the government had been "beaten at last with law, justice, and facts all on its side, and Oberlin with its rebellious Higher Law creed is triumphant."[957]

That these events were not without their political influence is apparent from the adoption of a resolution at the great Cleveland convention above mentioned asserting that the chief reliance of freedom in the United States rested in the Republican party.[958] It is worthy of note also that this party at its state convention, held in June, demanded the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act.[959] It has been already pointed out that some of the counsel of the Oberlin rescuers early received places of political preferment, partly at least in consequence of distinction won by them in the defence of those known to be guilty of violating the law of 1850.[960]

The enactment of personal liberty laws by various Northern states, with the purpose of impairing the efficiency of the Fugitive Slave laws, is characteristic of the period during which the underground system had its most rapid expansion, namely, the two decades from 1840 to 1860. These laws may be fairly considered as the palpable but guarded expression of an opposition that was free to go to the full length in its midnight operation of the Underground Road. During the period indicated occurred the series of celebrated fugitive slave cases, beginning with the Latimer case in 1842; and the precautions, rarely neglected by the friend of the slave, were often forgotten or spurned in the excitement of the instant or in the exaltation of wrath. The rigorous character of the law of 1850 acted in two ways north of Mason and Dixon's line: first, it created a reaction against slavery and brought many recruits into underground work to aid the rapidly increasing number of escaping slaves; second, in connection with the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, it led public sentiment in many states to provide additional safeguards in the form of personal liberty bills for the protection of fugitives and their helpers.[961] These bills ran counter in spirit if not always in letter to legislation that was held by the United States Supreme Court to be in keeping with the constitutional clause providing for the recovery of fugitive slaves. In principle they were, therefore, like the nullification ordinance of 1832.[962]

While the system of the Underground Railroad was thus expanding and pressing everywhere against legislative restraints, there arose a man who sought to solve the whole slavery problem in his own rash way. When John Brown led a company of slaves from Missouri to Canada despite the attempts to prevent him; and when soon thereafter he attempted to execute his plan for the general liberation of slaves, he showed the extreme to which the aid to fugitives might lead. The influence of Brown's training in Underground Railroad work is plain in the methods and plans he followed, which have given him a place in American history. Early convinced that action was the thing needed to help the bondman, he set himself to find a way of effecting the destruction of slavery. In devising his scheme he seems to have considered an underground channel of escape as a necessary feature of it for those lacking the courage to join a movement sure to involve them in armed conflict with their masters. This feature was designated the "Subterranean Pass Way." The varying character of the testimony in regard to this feature, as well as the natural change of view that took place in Brown's mind with the passage of the years, does not permit one to say definitely what importance was attached by the liberator to the Pass Way as a part of his plan, but its utility in reducing the value of slaves must have been apparent to him. That the whole movement he contemplated would have the effect of making slave property unstable he showed when speaking of the initiative of the movement in Virginia. Brown said: "If the slaves could in this way be driven out of the county, the whole system would be weakened in that State."[963] In this matter the judgment of the liberator was not at fault, for it has been estimated that his attack on Harper's Ferry caused the value of slave property in Virginia to decline to the extent of $10,000,000.[964] That Brown had the sympathy of a large number of persons in the North, including some public men, was a circumstance calculated to make a deeper impression on the minds of the Southern men generally than this decline in the price of Virginia slaves.

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

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[CHAPTER XI]