| The first cases under the new law. |
The first apprehension of an escaped slave, under the new Act, was made in the city of New York. One James Hamlet, who had three years before left his mistress, Mary Brown, of Baltimore, was the victim. He had a wife and children in New York. He was surprised at his work, hastily tried, and delivered to Mrs. Brown's agent, who conducted him back to Baltimore. When the news of the event spread abroad it created great excitement among the negro population throughout the North, and great indignation on the part of the white citizens in many quarters.
| The opposition to the execution of the law. |
It was calculated that there were from fifteen to twenty thousand escaped slaves living at that time in the non-slaveholding Commonwealths who were liable to apprehension under the law; and every person having any negro blood, whether escaped from slavery or not, felt the insecurity created by the law. Meetings of persons belonging to these classes were immediately held in Boston and New York, and resolutions were passed at them, praying the white people to move for the repeal of the law.
In answer, so to speak, to these appeals, mass-meetings of white people were held in Lowell, Syracuse, and Boston, at which the law was denounced, its repeal demanded, and aid pledged to the negroes in the North in resisting the execution of the law. Ministers of the Gospel, such as Beecher, Storrs, Furness, Spear, and Cheever, rained down denunciations upon the law from their pulpits, declared it to be in direct contravention of the law of God, and counselled resistance to its execution.
| Establishment of the "Underground." |
In the midst of this excitement two Georgia slaves, named William and Ellen Crafts, had succeeded in reaching Boston, and were concealed by some of the most high-toned people of that city, the Hillards, Lorings, and Parkers, from their pursuers, and aided in a successful escape to England. The first branch of the "Underground," established after the passage of the law, ran through very respectable quarters.