The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom: A comprehensive history

by Wilbur Henry Siebert

The vote by which the new law had been passed through the two Houses of Congress did not betoken a disposition at the North to meet the obligations it imposed upon that section. Only three of the senators representing free states voted for the measure. These were Dodge and Jones, of Indiana, and Sturgeon, of Pennsylvania. Among the one hundred and thirty-six members from the Northern states in the House, only thirty-one voted with the slaveholders. Three of the thirty-one were Whigs, the rest Democrats.[920] Jefferson Davis showed that he comprehended the true situation when he said, during the following session of Congress, that the history of the law proved that it would not furnish the needed security, because the Northern majority did not pass the bill, but merely allowed the Southern minority to pass it, and because the measure had to be executed in the North.[921] This view of the case seems not to have been taken by those representing the border slave states. The comprehensive character of Clay's scheme was favorable to the incorporation in it of a measure stringent enough to suit the most aggrieved without exciting the opposition such a measure would have called out if presented by itself.

Whatever the expectations of the various slaveholding states with regard to the recovery of their runaways under the new law, Joshua R. Giddings, himself an enthusiastic agent of the Underground Railroad and a better judge of the real convictions of the North than Webster, took the earliest occasion to give utterance to the sentiments of the people upon whom depended the success or failure of the law of 1850. Giddings did not delay, nor did he mince matters. In the earliest days of the session following that in which the compromise had been passed he denounced the Fugitive Slave Law and predicted its failure. Concerning the citizens of his own state, he said: "The freemen of Ohio will never turn out to chase the panting fugitive. They will never be metamorphosed into bloodhounds, to track him to his hiding-place, and seize and drag him out, and deliver him to his tormentors. Rely upon it they will die first.... Let no man tell me there is no higher law than this fugitive bill. We feel there is a law of right, of justice, of freedom, implanted in the breast of every intelligent human being, that bids him look with scorn upon this libel on all that is called law."[922]

That slave-owners counted on deriving benefits from the law appears from the great number of attempts at once made to reclaim runaways, and the frequent prosecutions of those guilty of facilitating their escape. The period sometimes designated the "era of slave-hunting" began in the North. Slave-owners and their agents entered vigorously upon the chase, and a larger number of communities in the free states than ever before were invaded by men engaged in the disgusting business of capturing blacks, intelligent and ambitious enough to seek their own liberty. Villages, towns and cities from Iowa to Maine, but especially in the middle states, witnessed scenes calculated to awaken the popular detestation of slavery as it had never been awakened before. Pitiable distress fell upon the fugitive settlers in the North and did much to quicken consciences everywhere. The capture of a fugitive in the place where he had been living invariably caused an outburst of indignation; and if the victim were not rescued before his removal by his captors a sum of money was raised if possible, and his freedom was purchased if that could be done. All of these circumstances contributed to increase the traffic along the numerous and tortuous lines of the Underground Railroad, which, according to the testimony of surviving abolitionists, did its most thriving business in all parts of the North during the decade from 1850 to 1860. The marked increase in the number of negroes seeking aid on their way to Canada at the outset of this period was due to the flight of many of the fugitive settlers from their accustomed haunts in the free states; but the supply later on must be attributed to the ease of communication through various channels by which slaves were every day learning of the body of abolitionists eager to help them to freedom. The readiness of the Northern people to act in opposition to the law arose from their abhorrence of a measure that they considered unrighteous and cruel, and from their resentment at the requirement that they must join in the hunt, so that the fugitive might be promptly enslaved.[923] The wide-spread opposition to the law led to prosecutions of underground workers in various places, and these prosecutions greatly helped to keep the slavery question before the attention of the country, despite the wishes and endeavors of the politicians who strove to silence the issue.[924]

The record of the year 1851 illustrates the character of the general contest, which had already set in before the enactment of the new law, but which assumed thenceforth an importance it had never had before. Early in the year Shadrach was seized in Boston, carried before the commissioner, and remanded to custody, but was rescued by a crowd of negroes and hurried off to Canada. Later Sims was caught and confined in the court-house until he was marched to Long Wharf under guard of three hundred policemen. William and Ellen Craft, fugitives from Georgia, were tracked to Boston, but, aided by Theodore Parker and other faithful friends, succeeded in escaping to England. Other notable instances of pursuit occurred at Chicago, Illinois, Poughkeepsie, New York, and Westchester and Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania. At Philadelphia a free negro was arrested, proved a slave by perjured testimony and taken to Maryland; fortunately he gained his liberty again by the refusal of the planter to whom he was delivered to identify him as his lost property. At Buffalo an alleged fugitive was released on writ of habeas corpus by Judge Conkling. At the hearing that followed the lack of evidence caused the judge to discharge the prisoner, and he was soon in Canada. In the attempt of the Maryland slave-owner, Gorsuch, and his party, to recover certain runaway slaves from Christiana, Pennsylvania, Gorsuch was killed and his son seriously wounded, while the fugitives managed to escape. This affair caused intense excitement, not only in Pennsylvania, but throughout the country. Another case resulting in the death of one of the parties concerned grew out of the kidnapping of a free negro girl from the house of a Mr. Miller, in Nottingham, Pennsylvania; Miller succeeded in rescuing the girl, but he was mysteriously murdered before he reached home. Near the close of the year 1851 Jerry McHenry was arrested in Syracuse, New York, while an agricultural fair and a convention of the Liberty party were in progress in that city. The attempted escape and the recapture of the negro wrought up the crowd to a state of intense feeling, which was not relieved until the fugitive was rescued and sent to Canada.[925] There were many other instances in which communities were given the opportunity to show their spirit in the defence of helpless bondmen.

The political leaders and the administration, who were responsible for the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law, were not willing to see its provisions thus trampled under foot. Upon the reassembling of Congress in December, 1850, President Fillmore expressed himself in his message as pleased with the compromise measures, although, he admitted, they had not yet realized their purpose fully. "It would be strange," he said, "if they had been received with immediate approbation by people and states prejudiced and heated by the exciting controversies of their representatives." He nevertheless had faith that the various enactments would be generally sustained. The tinge of doubt in the communication of the President pretty certainly referred to the fierce denunciations of the Fugitive Slave Law recently uttered by mass-meetings in various parts of the Northern states, and to several cases of resistance where the execution of the law had been attempted. His reassuring expressions voiced his own hope and that of the political magnates; and he meant also, perhaps, to carry assurance to the South. Some balm seemed necessary, for the Georgia convention in accepting the compromise as a "permanent adjustment of the sectional controversy," voted, "That it is the deliberate opinion of this convention that upon the faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Bill by the proper authorities depends the preservation of our much-loved Union."[926]

The open resistance to the law upon several occasions in 1851 brought opportunities to the administration to exert itself in favor of the faithful execution of the law. After the rescue of Shadrach from the United States marshal on February 15, much excitement existed, especially at the centre of government. The President immediately issued a proclamation commanding all civil and military officers, and calling on all good citizens, to "aid in quelling this and similar combinations" and to assist in capturing the persons that had set the law at defiance. The Senate, after debate, adopted a resolution requesting the President to lay before it information relating to the rescue, and inquiring whether further legislation was desirable. This request was promptly complied with by the executive. Then Clay, the author of the resolution, urged that the President be invested with extraordinary power to enforce the law, but failed to gain substantial support for his proposition. In the meantime five of the rescuers of Shadrach were indicted and tried, but owing to the disagreement of the jury none of them were convicted. The energetic action of the administration and its supporters had apparently accomplished no result, except to demonstrate the difficulties with which the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act was encompassed.

The same lesson was taught in two important instances toward the end of this year, when the government undertook to carry the law into effect. The Gorsuch tragedy at Christiana, Pennsylvania, led the President to order the United States marshal, district attorney and commissioner from Philadelphia, with forty-five United States marines from the navy-yard, to assist in arresting those supposed to have been engaged in the fight. The fugitives had escaped and could not be recovered, but a number of other persons, most of whom were colored, were arrested, taken to Philadelphia, and indicted for treason. But the efforts of the authorities to convict were unavailing, and the prisoners went scot free.[927]

Within a few days after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in September of the previous year, the spirit of resistance in Syracuse, New York, had manifested itself in public meetings at which the law was denounced and a Vigilance Committee organized.[928] In the early part of June following, Daniel Webster, who was travelling extensively through the Northern states and exerting his personal and official influence to secure obedience to the law, visited Syracuse and made a speech. In the course of his remarks he insisted in no conciliatory terms that the law must be enforced. He said, "Those persons in this city who mean to oppose the execution of the Fugitive Slave Law are traitors! traitors!! traitors!!! This law ought to be obeyed, and it will be enforced—yes, it shall be enforced, and that, too, in the midst of the next anti-slavery convention, if then there shall be any occasion to enforce it."

As if in fulfillment of this prediction of the Secretary of State, on October 1, 1851, a day when a convention of the Liberty party was in progress, an attempt was made to capture one Jerry McHenry, an undoubted fugitive; but the Vigilance Committee, under efficient leadership, succeeded in rescuing him out of the hands of his captors. At this outcome there was much exultation among the anti-slavery people, as also when later the prosecution instituted against eighteen of the rescuers ended in a failure to convict. It is worthy of note that Seward was the first to sign the bond of those indicted; and that Gerrit Smith, then a member of Congress, made a defiant speech in the fall of 1852 in Canandaigua, where the trial of one of the rescuers was going on.[929]