Ex-President R. B. HAYES,
who, as a young lawyer in Cincinnati, Ohio, served as counsel in fugitive slave cases.
Among the names of the legal opponents of fugitive slave legislation in Massachusetts, that of Josiah Quincy, who gained distinction in public life and as President of Harvard College, is first to be noted. Mr. Quincy was counsel for the alleged runaway in one of the earliest cases arising under the act of 1793.[825] In some of the well-known cases that were tried under the later act Richard H. Dana, Robert Rantoul, Jr., Ellis Gray Loring, Samuel E. Sewell and Charles G. Davis appeared for the defence. Sims' case was conducted by Robert Rantoul, Jr., and Mr. Sewell; Shadrach's by Messrs. Davis, Sewell and Loring; and Burns' case by Mr. Dana and others.[826]
Instances gathered from other Northern states seem to indicate that information of arrests under the Fugitive Slave acts almost invariably called out some volunteer to use his legal knowledge and skill in behalf of the accused, and that in many centres there were not lacking men of professional standing ready to give their best efforts under circumstances that promised, in general, little but defeat. Owen Lovejoy, of Princeton, Illinois, was arrested on one occasion for aiding fugitive slaves, and was defended by James H. Collins, a well-known attorney of Chicago. Returning from the trial of Lovejoy, Mr. Collins learned of the arrest of Deacon Cushing, of Will County, on a similar charge, and together with John M. Wilson he immediately volunteered to conduct the new case.[827] At the hearing of Jim Gray, a runaway from Missouri, held before Judge Caton of the State Supreme Court at Ottawa, Illinois, Judge E. S. Leland, B. C. Cook, O. C. Gray and J. O. Glover appeared voluntarily as counsel for the negro.[828] As a result of the hearing it was decided by the court that the arrest was illegal, since it had been made under the state law; the negro was, therefore, discharged from the arrest, but could not be released by the judge from the custody of the United States marshal. However, the bondman was rescued, and thus escaped. Eight men were indicted on account of this affair, prominent among whom were John Hossack and Dr. Joseph Stout, of Ottawa. Mr. Hossack, who was tried first, had an array of six of the leading lawyers of Chicago to present his side of the case; they were the Hons. Isaac N. Arnold, Joseph Knox, B. C. Cook, J. V. Eustace, E. Leland and E. C. Larnard. Mr. Stout had three of these men to represent him, namely, Messrs. Eustace, Larnard and Arnold.[829] Early in March, 1860, two citizens of Tabor, Iowa, Edward Sheldon and Newton Woodford, were captured while conducting four runaways from the Indian Territory to a station of the Underground Railroad. At the trial they were ably defended by James Vincent, Lewis Mason and his brother, and were acquitted. It may be added that the trial closed at nine o'clock in the evening, and before daybreak the negroes had been rescued and sent forward on their way to Canada.[830]
In Philadelphia there were several lawyers that could always be depended on to resist the claims of the slave-owner to his recaptured property in the courts. William Still mentions two of these, namely, David Paul Brown and William S. Pierce, as "well-known veterans" ready to defend the slave "wherever and whenever called upon to do so."[831] Robert Purvis relates an incident of David Paul Brown that will be recognized as characteristic of the spirit in which the class of advocates to which he belonged rendered their services for the slave. A case growing out of the capture of a negro by his pursuers occupied the attention of Mr. Purvis for a season in 1836, and he desired to engage Mr. Brown for the defence; he accordingly presented the matter to the distinguished attorney, offering him a fee of fifty dollars in advance. Mr. Brown promptly undertook the case, but refused the money, saying: "I shall not now, nor have I ever, accepted fee or reward, other than the approval of my own conscience, and I respectfully decline receiving your money."[832]
In what was, so far as known, the last case under the Slave Law of 1850, Mr. John Dean, a prominent lawyer of Washington, D.C., displayed noteworthy zeal in the interest of his client, a supposed fugitive. The affair occurred in June, 1862, and came within the cognizance of the United States courts. Mr. Dean, who had just obtained the discharge of the colored man from arrest, interfered to prevent his seizure a second time as the slave of a Virginian. The claimant, aided by other persons, sought to detain the black until a civil officer should arrive to take him into custody, but the attorney's surprising play at fisticuffs defeated the efforts of the assailing party and the black got away. He soon enlisted in one of the colored regiments then forming in Washington, and it is to be surmised that all question concerning his status was put to rest by this step. Mr. Dean was indicted for aiding in the escape of a fugitive slave, and although the affair is said to have caused great excitement in the Capital, especially in the two Houses of Congress, it never reached a legal decision, but lapsed through the progress of events that led rapidly to the Emancipation Proclamation and the repeal of the Fugitive Slave laws.[833]
In the crisis that was reached with the beginning of the new decade, the question of the rendition of fugitives from service was by no means lost sight of. As in 1850, so in 1860 a measure for the more effective protection of slave property appears to have been a necessary condition in any plan of compromise that was to gain Southern support. President Buchanan sought to meet the situation by proposing, in his message of December 4, 1860, the adoption of "explanatory" amendments to the Constitution recognizing the master's right of recovery and the validity of the Fugitive Slave Law; he also recommended a declaration against the so-called personal liberty laws of the states as unconstitutional, and therefore void. This produced, within three months, in the House, a crop of more than twenty resolutions relative to fugitive slaves; the deliberations of that body issued at length, March 1, 1861, in the passage of a bill to make more effective the law of 1850. The new measure provided for an appeal to the Circuit Court of the United States, where cases were to be tried by jury. But in the Senate this bill never got beyond the first reading.
That the people of the Northern states would have acquiesced in a new law for the surrender of runaway negroes was certainly not to be expected. Both the law of 1793 and that of 1850 had been systematically evaded as well as frequently denounced, and now memorials were being sent to Congress praying for the repeal of the despised legislation.[834] A bill for this purpose was introduced into the House by Mr. Blake, of Ohio, in 1860, but was smothered by the attempt to amend the existing law. A similar measure was introduced into the Senate in December, 1861, by Mr. Howe, of Wisconsin, who prefaced its presentation by declaring that the Fugitive Slave Law "has had its day. As a party act it has done its work. It probably has done as much mischief as any other one act that was ever passed by the national legislature. It has embittered against each other two great sections of the country."[835] The bill was referred to a committee, where it was kept for some time, and at length was reported adversely in February, 1863.