In the meantime slavery was subjected to a series of destructive attacks in Congress, despite the views of some, who held that the institution was under constitutional protection. The passions and exigencies of the War, together with the humane motives from which the anti-slavery movement had sprung, did not leave these assaults without justification. In August, 1861, a law was enacted providing for the emancipation of negroes employed in military service against the government; in April, 1862, slavery was abolished in the District of Columbia; in May, army officers were forbidden to restore fugitives to their owners; in June slavery was prohibited in the territories; and in July an act was passed granting freedom to fugitives from disloyal masters that could find refuge with the Union forces.
In the train of these measures, and in September of the same year in which most of them were enacted, President Lincoln issued his proclamation of warning to the South declaring that all persons held as slaves in the states continuing in rebellion on the 1st of January, 1863, should be "thenceforth and forever free." When the warning was carried into effect on the first day of the new year by the famous Proclamation of Emancipation, ownership of slave property in the border states was not abolished. The loyalty of these states was their protection against interference. As the Fugitive Slave Law was not yet repealed opportunity was still afforded to civil officers to enforce its provisions both north and south of Mason and Dixon's line. North of the line there was, however, no disposition to enforce the law. South of it wandering negroes were sometimes arrested by the civil authorities for the purpose of being returned to their masters. The following advertisement, printed two months and a half after the final proclamation went into effect, illustrates the method pursued in dealing with supposed fugitives:—
"There was committed to the jail in Warren County, Kentucky, as runaway slave, on the 29th September, 1862, a negro man calling himself Jo Miner. He says he is free, but has nothing to show to establish the fact. He is about thirty-five years of age, very dark copper color, about five feet eight inches high, and will weigh one hundred and fifty pounds. The owner can come forward, prove property, and pay charges, or he will be dealt with as the law requires.
R. J. Potter, J. W. C.
March 16, 1863. 1 m."[836]
Although the proposition to repeal the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 had been made in Congress in 1860, and repeated in 1861 and 1862, no definite and conclusive action was taken until 1864. During the session of 1863-1864 five bills were introduced into the House looking toward the repeal of the law. In the discussion of the subject the probable effect of revocation upon the border states was frequently dwelt upon, and it was urged by many members that the loyal slave states would consider repeal as "insult and outrage." Mr. Mallory, of Kentucky, was one of those that took this view. He therefore demanded that the law "be permitted to remain on the statute-book," urging, "If you say it will be a dead letter, so much less excuse have you for repealing it, and so much more certainly is the insult and wrong to Kentucky gratuitous." In reply to this and other arguments the need of enlisting negro soldiers was pressed on the attention of the House, and it was said by Mr. Hubbard, of Connecticut, "You cannot draft black men into the field while your marshals are chasing women and children in the woods of Ohio with a view to render them back into bondage. The moral sense of the nation, ay, of the world, would revolt at it."[837] The conclusion that slavery was already doomed to utter destruction could not be avoided. The House therefore decided to throw away the empty guarantee of the institution, and June 13 the vote on the bill for repeal was taken. It resulted in the measure being carried by a vote of 82 to 57. When the bill from the House came before the Senate the question of repeal was already under consideration, and, indeed, had been for three months and a half. Nevertheless, the House measure was at once referred to committee and was reported back June 15. It was then discussed by the Senate for several days and voted on on June 23, the result being a vote of 27 in favor of repeal to 12 against it. Two days later President Lincoln affixed his signature to the bill, and the Fugitive Slave laws were thereby annulled June 25, 1864. The constitutional provision for the recovery of runaways, which had been judicially declared in the decision of Prigg's case to be self-executing was not cancelled until December 18, 1865, when the Secretary of State proclaimed the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution by the requisite number of states.
[CHAPTER X]
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.