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,