When she feared the party were closely pursued, she would take them for a time on a train southward bound, as no one seeing a company of negroes going in this direction would for an instant suppose them to be fugitives. As their leader out of bondage, her people gave her the name of "Moses," and thus she is generally known.
§ 74. Prosecutions of agents.—Such acts as those daily performed by the conductors on the Underground Railroad could not be carried on under the existing laws without leading to prosecutions. Large rewards were many times offered for Harriet's capture, but she eluded all efforts to stop her work. At one time the Maryland legislature offered a reward to any person who should secure Thomas Garrett in any public jail in the State. He was a Delaware Quaker, who, it is said, helped twenty-nine hundred slaves in escaping. The Governor was required to employ the best legal skill to prosecute him on the charge of aiding runaways.[248] He was afterward tried and fined a sum which consumed his entire property. As this was paid, the officer who received it said that he hoped the remembrance of this punishment would prevent any further trouble. Mr. Garrett, undaunted, replied that they had taken all that he possessed, but added, "If thee knows any poor fugitive who wants a breakfast, send him to me."[249] In fact, he seemed absolutely fearless. Angry slaveholders often called upon him, and demanded their property. He never denied knowledge of their slaves, or of having helped them on their way, but, in the most quiet manner, positively refused to give information concerning them.[250]
§ 75. Formal organization.—In 1838 the first formal organization of the Underground Railroad was made, with Robert Purvis as President. It was said that two marketwomen in Baltimore were their best helpers. They had come into possession of a number of passports, or "freedoms," which were used by slaves for part of the distance, and then were returned to serve the same purpose again.[251]
In all transactions connected with this organization the greatest secrecy was necessarily observed, seldom more than two or three persons at a station being allowed any knowledge of it. In the Liberator of 1843, a notice is found cautioning people against exposing in any way the methods used by fugitives in escaping, as it only helped the pursuers in the next case. The fugitives themselves were usually careful in this respect. Frederick Douglass absolutely refused until after the abolition of slavery to reveal the method of his escape.[252]
Mrs. G. S. Hillard, of Boston, was in the habit of putting fugitives in an upper room of her house. A colored man was placed there, and when Mrs. Hillard went up to see him, she found he had carefully pulled down all the shades at the windows. She told him that there was no danger of his being seen from the street. "Perhaps not, Missis," he replied, "but I do not want to spoil the place." He was afraid lest some one might see a colored face there, and so excite suspicions injurious to the next man.[253]
§ 76. General effect of escapes.—Although many fugitives were aided previous to 1850, it was after the new law went into effect that the great efforts of the Abolitionists were centred on this form of assistance. Of such importance did it become, that at the beginning of the Civil War one of the chief complaints of the Southern States was the injury received through the aid given their escaping slaves by the North.[254]
It was, however, really the "safety valve to the institution of slavery. As soon as leaders arose among the slaves who refused to endure the yoke, they would go North. Had they remained, there must have been enacted at the South the direful scenes of San Domingo."[255]
CHAPTER V. PERSONAL LIBERTY LAWS.
§ 77. [Character of the personal liberty laws.]
§ 78. [Acts passed before the Prigg decision (1793-1842).]
§ 79. [Acts passed between the Prigg decision and the second Fugitive Slave Law (1842-1850).]
§ 80. [Acts occasioned by the law of 1850 (1850-1860).]
§ 81. [Massachusetts acts.]
§ 82. [Review of the acts by States.]
§ 83. [Effect of the personal liberty laws.]
§ 77. Character of the personal liberty laws.—The personal liberty laws were statutes passed in the Northern States whose object was to defeat in some measure the national Fugitive Slave Law. Often their ostensible purpose was to protect the free negroes from kidnappers, and to this end they secured for the alleged fugitive the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, and the trial by jury. Sometimes, however, they frankly avowed their aim as a deliberate attempt to interfere with the execution of the United States statutes. In the following examination of these laws, they will be considered first chronologically, and afterward more minutely according to their subject matter. In previous chapters we have noticed many instances wherein fugitives have been befriended by individuals, or by organizations like the Antislavery Societies or the Underground Railroad. But the action of the State governments in the personal liberty bills, from the time the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 began to be executed to the outbreak of the Civil War, showed that the dissatisfaction of the North was fundamental, and was not confined merely to the few in the van of the Antislavery movement.