rushRUSH R. SLOANE,of Sandusky, Ohio,fined $3000 and costs for assisting runaways to Canada.
RUSH R. SLOANE,of Sandusky, Ohio,fined $3000 and costs for assisting runaways to Canada.
RUSH R. SLOANE,of Sandusky, Ohio,fined $3000 and costs for assisting runaways to Canada.
thaddeusTHADDEUS STEVENS, M.C.,who befriended fugitives in southeastern Pennsylvania, and appeared for them in court.
THADDEUS STEVENS, M.C.,who befriended fugitives in southeastern Pennsylvania, and appeared for them in court.
THADDEUS STEVENS, M.C.,
who befriended fugitives in southeastern Pennsylvania, and appeared for them in court.
wareJ. R. WARE,of Mechanicsburg, Ohio,a station-keeper, in a centre receiving fugitives from several converging routes.
J. R. WARE,of Mechanicsburg, Ohio,a station-keeper, in a centre receiving fugitives from several converging routes.
J. R. WARE,of Mechanicsburg, Ohio,a station-keeper, in a centre receiving fugitives from several converging routes.
hayesEx-PresidentR. B. HAYES,who, as a young lawyer in Cincinnati, Ohio, served as counsel in fugitive slave cases.
Ex-PresidentR. B. HAYES,who, as a young lawyer in Cincinnati, Ohio, served as counsel in fugitive slave cases.
Ex-PresidentR. 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 anegro 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.
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]
"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 beenjudicially 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.
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.
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;1⁄3for the new Church and1⁄3for 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 offive 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]
gerritGERRIT SMITH, M.C.,the multi-millionnaire, whose mansion in Peterboro, New York, was a station.
GERRIT SMITH, M.C.,the multi-millionnaire, whose mansion in Peterboro, New York, was a station.
GERRIT SMITH, M.C.,the multi-millionnaire, whose mansion in Peterboro, New York, was a station.
joshuaJOSHUA R. GIDDINGS, M.C.,who kept a room in his house in Jefferson, Ohio, for fugitives.
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS, M.C.,who kept a room in his house in Jefferson, Ohio, for fugitives.
JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS, M.C.,who kept a room in his house in Jefferson, Ohio, for fugitives.
charlesCHARLES SUMNER,THE CHAMPION OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.
CHARLES SUMNER,THE CHAMPION OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.
CHARLES SUMNER,
THE CHAMPION OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.
danaRICHARD H. DANA, Jr.,COUNSEL FOR COLORED REFUGEES IN BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.
RICHARD H. DANA, Jr.,COUNSEL FOR COLORED REFUGEES IN BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.
RICHARD H. DANA, Jr.,COUNSEL FOR COLORED REFUGEES IN BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.
The group of enactments just considered together with many other early measures relating to the subject of fugitives makes it clear that the question of extradition of runaway slaves had also arisen in colonial times. A stipulation for the return of fugitives had been inserted in the formal agreement entered into by Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Haven at the time of the formation of the New England Confederation in 1643,[858]and may be supposed tohave remained in force for a period of forty years. In the first national constitution, the Articles of Confederation adopted in 1781, no such provision was made. This omission soon became serious through the action of the states of Vermont, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island between 1777 and 1784 in taking steps toward immediate or gradual emancipation; for the first time the question of the status of fugitives in free regions was now raised.
When, in 1787, the question arose of providing a government for the territory northwest of the Ohio River, the difficulty was felt; and the Northwest Ordinance included a clause for the reclamation of fugitives from labor. A proposition made by Mr. King in 1785 to prohibit slavery in this region without any provision for reclaiming fugitives had gone to committee, but was never afterwards called up in Congress. In the discussion of 1787 an amendment was offered by Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts, the first clause of which excluded slavery from the territory, and the second clause provided for the rendition of fugitives. The previous delay and the prompt and unanimous approval of the compromise measure of Mr. Dane give force to the contention of a special student of the Ordinance, that the stipulation forbidding slavery could not have been adopted without the provision for the recovery of runaways.[859]
About six weeks after the incorporation, by the Continental Congress, of the fugitive slave clause in the Northwest Ordinance, a similar provision was made a part of the Constitution of the United States by the vote of the Federal Convention at Philadelphia.[860]In the case of the Constitution, as of the Ordinance, the clause was probably necessary for the acceptance and adoption of the instrument, and the action of the legislative body was unanimous.[861]
The settlement reached in regard to fugitives appears to have excited little comment in the various state conventions called to ratify the work of the Philadelphia Convention. It would be interesting to know what was the nature of the discussion on the point in the North. In the South the tone of sentiment concerning the matter is illustrated by the remarks of Madison in the Virginia convention, and of Iredell and Pinckney in the conventions of North and South Carolina respectively.[862]Madison asserted of the fugitive clause that it "secures to us that property which we now possess." Iredell explained that "In some of the Northern states they have emancipated all theirslaves. If any of our slaves go there and remain there a certain time, they would, by the present laws, be entitled to their freedom, so that their masters could not get them again. This would be extremely prejudicial to the inhabitants of the Southern states; and to prevent it this clause is inserted in the Constitution. Though the wordslaveis not mentioned, this is the meaning of it." Pinckney declared: "We have obtained a right to recover our slaves, in whatever part of America they may take refuge, which is a right we had not before. In short, considering the circumstances, we have made the best terms for the security of this species of property it was in our power to make. We would have made better if we could; but, on the whole, I do not think them bad."[863]
The constitutional provision was, of course, general in its terms, and, although mandatory in form, did not designate any particular officer or branch of government to put it into execution. Accordingly the law of 1793 was enacted. This law, however, was of such a character as to defeat itself from the beginning. Before the close of the year in which the measure was passed a case of resistance occurred, which showed that adverse sentiment existed in Massachusetts,[864]and three years later another case—especially interesting because it concerned an escaped slave of Washington—demonstrated to the first President that there was strong opposition in New Hampshire to the law.[865]The method of proof prescribed by the measure was intended to facilitate the recovery of fugitives, but it was so slack that it encouraged the abduction of free negroes from the Northern states,[866]and thus, by the injustice it wrought, stirred many to give protection and assistance to negroes.[867]The number of cases of kidnapping that occurred along the southern border of the free states between 1793 and 1850 helps doubtless to explain the development of numerous initial stations of the Underground Railroad during this period.
The inefficiency of the first Fugitive Slave Act was early recognized, and the period during which it was in existence witnessed many attempts at amendment. It is possible that the failure of Washington to recover his slave in 1796 furnished the occasion for the first of these.[868]A motion was made, December 29, 1796, looking toward the alteration of the law.[869]Apparently nothing was done at this time, and the matter lapsed until 1801, when it came up in January and again in December of that year.[870]In the month last named a committee was appointed in the House, which reported a bill that gave rise to considerable debate. This bill provided that employing a fugitive as well as harboring one should be punishable; and that those furnishing employment to negroes must require them to show official certificates and must publish descriptions of them. It is reported that Southern members "considered it a great injury to the owners of that species of property, that runaways were employed in the Middle and Northern states, and even assisted in procuringa living. They stated that, when slaves ran away and were not recovered, it excited discontent among the rest. When they were caught and brought home, they informed their comrades how well they were received and assisted, which excited a disposition in others to attempt escaping, and obliged their masters to use greater severity than they otherwise would. It was, they said, even on the score of humanity, good policy in those opposed to slavery to agree to this law."[871]Northern members did not accept this view of the fugitive slave question, and when the proposed bill was put to vote January 18, 1802, it failed of passage.[872]The division on the measure took place on sectional grounds, all the Northern members but five voting against it, all the Southern members but two for it.[873]
For the next fifteen years Congress appears to have given no consideration to the propriety of amending the law of 1793. Its attention was mainly occupied by the abolition of the slave-trade, the agitation preliminary to the War of 1812, and the events of that War.[874]At length, in 1817, a Senate committee reported a bill to revise the law, but it was never brought up for consideration. In the same year a bill was drafted and presented to the House, on account of the need of a remedy for the increased insecurity of slave property in the border slave states. Pindall, of Virginia, seems to have been its originator; at any rate he was the chairman of the committee that reported the proposition. The interest in the discussion that resulted was increased, doubtless, by two petitions, one from the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, asking for a milder law than that in existence, the other from the Baltimore Quakers, seeking some security for free negroes against kidnapping.
The House bill as presented in 1817 secured to the claimant of a runaway the right to prove his title before the courtsof his own state, and thus to reclaim his human property through requisition upon the governor of the state in which it had taken refuge; it was further provided that the writ of habeas corpus was to have no force as against the provisions of the proposed act. The objections made to the measure are worth noting. Mr. Holmes, of Massachusetts, disapproved of the effort to dispense with the writ of habeas corpus, stating that such action would remove a safeguard from the liberty of free colored people. Mr. Mason, of the same state, declared against trial by jury, which somebody had proposed, insisting that "juries in Massachusetts would in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred decide in favor of fugitives, and he did not wish his town (Boston) infected with the runaways of the South." Mr. Sergeant, of Pennsylvania, sought to amend the bill by making the judges of the state in which the arrest occurred the tribunal to decide the fact of slavery. And, last of all, Mr. Whitman, of Massachusetts, opposed the provision making it a penal offence for a state officer to decline to execute the act; a point, it should be remarked, that came into prominence in the famous case of Priggvs.Pennsylvania in 1842. Notwithstanding these efforts to modify the bill, it was carried without change, January 30, 1818, by a vote of 84 to 69. In the Senate the bill was not passed without alteration. After a vote to limit the act to four years, the upper House made amendments requiring some proofs of the debt of service claimed other than the affidavit of the claimant, and then passed the act on March 12. The lower House did not find the modified bill to its liking, and therefore declined to consider it further.[875]
This failure to secure a new general fugitive slave act by no means prevented those interested from renewing theirendeavors in that direction. Before the close of the year the House was prompted to bestir itself again by a resolution of the Maryland legislature asking protection against citizens of Pennsylvania who were charged with harboring and protecting fugitive slaves.[876]That the allegation was well founded cannot be doubted. Evidence has already been adduced to show that numerous branches of the Underground Railroad had begun to develop in southeastern Pennsylvania as early at least as the year 1800.[877]A month after the presentation of the Maryland resolution a committee of the House was appointed. This committee reported a bill without delay, but again nothing was accomplished. The framing of the Missouri Compromise at the next session of Congress, in 1820, gave opportunity for the incorporation of a fugitive recovery clause, to enable Southern settlers in Missouri and other slave states to recapture their absconding slaves from the free territory north of the new state.[878]The fugitive clause in the Ordinance of 1787 had insured the same right for slave-owners taking land along the western frontier of Illinois.
But of what utility were such provisions unless they could be carried into effect? Immediately after the Missouri Compromise became a law, propositions for new fugitive slave acts were again offered in both the House and the Senate.[879]A later attempt was made in the winter of 1821-1822, when another resolution of the Maryland legislature similar to the one mentioned above was presented. These efforts, like the earlier ones, failed to secure the desired legislation.[880]
The last petition of Maryland to Congress for the redress of her grievance due to the underground operations of anti-slavery Pennsylvanians was made December 17, 1821. The month of January of the same year had witnessed the presentation in Congress of a resolution from the general assembly of Kentucky, protesting against Canada's admission of fugitives to her domain, and requesting negotiation with Great Britain on the subject. In 1826, during the administration of John Quincy Adams, negotiations were at length opened. Henry Clay, then Secretary of State, instructed Mr. Gallatin, the American Minister at the Court of St. James, to propose an agreement between the two countries providing for "mutual surrender of all persons held to service or labor, under the laws of either party, who escape into the territory of the other." His purpose in urging such a stipulation was, he declared, "to provide for a growing evil which has produced some, and if it be not shortly checked, is likely to produce much more irritation." He also stated that Virginia and Kentucky were particularly anxious that an understanding should be reached.
In February, 1827, Mr. Clay again communicated with Mr. Gallatin on the subject, being led to do so by another appeal made to the general government by the legislature of Kentucky. At this time he mentioned the fact that a provision for the restoration of fugitive slaves had been inserted in the treaty recently concluded with the United Mexican States, a treaty, it should be added, that failed of confirmation by the Mexican Senate. About five months later the American Minister sent word to the Secretary of State that the English authorities had decided that "It was utterly impossible for them to agree to a stipulation for the surrender of fugitive slaves," and this decision was reaffirmed in September, 1827.
The positive terms in which this conclusion was announced by the representative of the British government might have been accepted as final at this time had not further consideration of the question been demanded by the House of Representatives.On May 10, 1828, that body adopted a resolution "requesting the President to open a negotiation with the British government in the view to obtain an arrangement whereby fugitive slaves, who have taken refuge in the Canadian provinces of that government, may be surrendered by the functionaries thereof to their masters, upon their making satisfactory proof of their ownership of said slaves." This resolution was promptly transmitted to Mr. Barbour, the new Minister, with the explanation before made to Gallatin, that the evil at which it was directed was a growing one, well calculated to disturb "the good neighborhood" that the United States desired to maintain with the adjacent British provinces. But as in the case of the former attempts to secure the extradition of the refugee settlers in Canada, so also in this, the advances of the American government were met by the persistent refusal of Great Britain to make a satisfactory answer.[881]
The agitation in Congress for a more effective fugitive slave law, and the diplomatic negotiations for the recovery of runaways from Canadian soil, which have been recounted in the preceding pages, must be regarded as furnishing evidence of the existence in many localities in the free states of a strong practical anti-slavery sentiment. This evidence is reënforced by the facts presented in the earlier chapters of this volume. The escape of slaves from their masters into the free states and their simple but impressive appeals for liberty were phenomena witnessed again and again by many Northern people during the opening as well as the later decades of the nineteenth century; and deepened the conviction in their minds that slavery was wrong. Thus for years the runaway slave was a missionary in the cause of freedom, especially in the rapidly settling Western states. His heroic pilgrimage, undertaken under the greatest difficulties, was calculated to excite active interest in his behalf. Persons living along the border of the slave states, whose sympathies were stirred to action by their personal knowledgeof the hardships of slavery, became the promoters of lines of Underground Railroad, sending or taking fugitives northward to friends they could trust. It was not an infrequent occurrence that intimate neighbors were called in to hear the thrilling tales of escape related in the picturesque and fervid language of negroes that valued liberty more than life. The writer, who has heard some of these stories from the lips of surviving refugees in Canada, can well understand the effect they must have produced upon the minds of the spectators. Many children got their lasting impression of slavery from the things they saw and heard in homes that were stations on the Underground Road. John Brown was reared in such a home. His father, Owen Brown, was among the earliest settlers of the Western Reserve in Ohio that are known to have harbored fugitives, and the son followed the father's example in keeping open house for runaway slaves.[882]As early as 1815 many blacks began to find their way across the Reserve,[883]and it is stated that even before this year more than a thousand fugitives had been assisted on their way to Canada by a few anti-slavery people of Brown County in southwestern Ohio.[884]It is probable that numerous escapes were also being made thus early through other settled regions. The cause for this early exodus is not far to seek. The increase of the domestic slave-trade from the northern belt of slaveholding states to the extreme South, due to the profitableness of cotton-raising, and stimulated by the prohibition of the foreign slave-trade in 1807, aroused slaves to flight in order to avoid being sold to unknown masters in remote regions. The slight knowledge they needed to guide them in a northerly course was easily obtainable through the rumors about Canada everywhere current during the War of 1812.[885]The noticeable political effects of the straggling migration that began under these circumstances is seen in the renewed agitation by Southern members of Congress during the years 1817 to 1822 for a more stringent Fugitive Slave Law, andthe negotiations with England several years later looking toward the restoration to the South of runaways who had found freedom and security on Canadian soil.
The influence of the Underground Road in spreading abroad an abiding anti-slavery sentiment was, of course, greatly restricted by the caution its operators had to observe to keep themselves and their protégés out of trouble. The deviating secret routes of the great system were developed in response to the need of passengers that were in constant danger of pursuit. It is this fact of the pursuit of runaways into various communities where they were supposed to be in hiding, together with the harsh scenes enacted by hireling slave-catchers in raiding some station of the Underground Road, that gave to the operations of the Road that publicity necessary to make converts to the anti-slavery cause. During the earlier years of the Road's development the pursuit of runaways was not so common as it came to be after 1840, and later, after the passage of the second Fugitive Slave Law in 1850; but cases are recorded, as already noted, in 1793 in Boston, 1804 in eastern Pennsylvania, 1818 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and elsewhere. These are but illustrations of a class of early cases that brought the question of slavery home to many Northern communities with such force as could not have been done in any other way. These cases, like the numerous cases of kidnapping that occurred during the same period, contributed not a little to keep alive a sentiment that was steadily opposed to slavery, and that expressed and strengthened itself in the practice of harboring and protecting fugitives. The great effect upon public opinion of these cases, and such as these, appears from the sad affair of Margaret Garner, a slave-woman who escaped from Boone County, Kentucky, late in January, 1856, and found shelter with her four children in the house of a colored man near Cincinnati, Ohio. Rather than see her offspring doomed to the fate from which she had hoped to save them, she nerved herself to accomplish their death. While her master, successful in his pursuit, was preparing to take them back across the river, she began the work of butchery by killing her favorite child. Before she could finish her awful task she wasinterrupted and put in prison. The efforts to prevent her return to Southern bondage proved unavailing, and she was at length delivered to her master, together with the children she had meant to kill. President R. B. Hayes, who was practising law in Cincinnati at the time, and lived on a pro-slavery street, told Professor James Monroe, of Oberlin College, that the tragedy converted "the whole street," and that the day after the murder "a leader among his pro-slavery neighbors" called at his house, and declared with great fervor, "Mr. Hayes, hereafter I am with you. From this time forward, I will not only be a black Republican, but I will be adamned abolitionist!"[886]
That the doctrine of immediate abolition should find expression during the years in which the underground movement was in its initial stage of development, is a fact the importance of which should be given due recognition in tracing the growth of anti-slavery sentiment to 1830, and in showing thus what was the preparation of the North for the advent of Garrison and his followers, and for the party movements in opposition to slavery. It is surely worthy of remark in this connection that, of the three men that promulgated the idea of immediate abolition before 1830, one published a book, containing, besides other things, an argument in support of the assistance rendered to fugitive slaves, while another was known both in Ohio and in the Southern states as an intrepid underground operator.
Of the trio the first in point of time as also in pungency of statement was the Rev. George Bourne, who went to live in Virginia about 1809 after several years residence in Maryland. Mr. Bourne's acquaintance with slavery impressed him deeply with the evils of the system, and he accordingly felt constrained to preach and also to publish some vehement protests against it. For this he was persecuted and driven from Virginia, and, like a hunted slave, he found his way in the night into Pennsylvania, where he settled with his family. Among his writings is a small volume entitledThe Book and Slavery Irreconcilable, published in 1816 and addressed to all thatprofessed to be members of Christian churches. In it the author vigorously and repeatedly urged the "immediate and total abolition" of slavery, and warned his contemporaries of the consequences of continuing the system until by its growth it should endanger the Union. He could discover no palliative suitable to the evil. "The system is so entirely corrupt," he said, "that it admits of no cure but by a total and immediate abolition. For a gradual emancipation is a virtual recognition of the right, and establishes the rectitude of the practice. If it be just for one moment, it is hallowed forever; and if it be inequitable, not a day should it be tolerated."[887]
Eight years after the appearance of the book containing these uncompromising views, a treatise was published at the town of Vevay on the Ohio River in southeastern Indiana by the Rev. James Duncan. This small work was entitledA Treatise on Slavery, in which is shown forth the Evil of Slaveholding, both from the Light of Nature and Divine Revelation. The purpose of the work as set forth by the author was to persuade all slaveholders that they were "guilty of a crime, not only of the highest aggravation, but one that, if persisted in," would "inevitably lead them to perdition."[888]He therefore assailed the principle of slavery, denying the argument admitted by some of the apologists for slavery among his contemporaries, namely, "that the emancipation of slaves need not be sudden, but gradual, lest the possessors of them should be too much impoverished, and lest the free inhabitants might be exposed to danger, if the blacks were all liberated at once." This doctrine of the inexpediency of immediate abolition Mr. Duncan denied, taking the position that such excuses would "go to justify the practice of slaveholding, because the only motive that men can have to practise slavery is that it may be a means of preventing poverty and other penal evils. If the fear of poverty or any penalsufferings will exculpate the possessors of slaves from blame for a few months or years, it will do it for life; and if some may be lawfully held to labor without wages, all may be held the same way; and if the principle of slavery is morally wrong, it ought not to be practised to avoid any penal evil, but if just, even the cruel treatment of slaves would not condemn the practice."[889]He maintained that, although the different sections of the country were not equally guilty of the sins of slaveholding, yet the nation as a whole was responsible for the evil,—on account of the number in the free states that were friendly to slavery, on account also of the advocacy by Northern representatives of the policy of slavery extension, and, finally, on account of the slack zeal of some of those inimical to the institution.[890]He proposed that Christians should have no church fellowship with slaveholders; he urged political action against slavery; and he supplemented the assertion that it was the duty of slaves to escape if they could, by the statement that it was impossible for any one to hinder or prevent their escape without flying in the face of the moral law.[891]As regards gradualism, which was practised in some states, he said: "If it is lawful to hold a man in bondage until he is twenty-eight years of age, it must be equally lawful to hold him to the day of his death; and if it is sinful to hold him to the day of his death, it must partake of the same species of crime to hold him until he istwenty-eight."[892]The arguments in support of his position he based largely upon the Decalogue, the Golden Rule and other scriptural injunctions, as well as upon the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.[893]Underground operators always justified themselves on these grounds; and their motives in joining the Liberty and Free Soil parties later—as many of them did—appear not to have been other than the motives of Bourne and Duncan in advocating political action against slavery.
The last member of the trio who complained of delay in granting freedom to the enslaved was the Rev. John Rankin, the pastor of a Presbyterian church in the town of Ripley on the Ohio River in southwestern Ohio. Long residence in Tennessee and Kentucky had filled him with hatred of slavery, and for this hatred he gave his reasons in a series of thirteen vigorous letters addressed to his brother Thomas, a merchant at Middlebrook, Augusta County, Virginia, who had recently become a slave-owner. The letters were written in 1824, and were collected in a little volume in 1826. In the preface, Mr. Rankin said that the safety of the government and the happiness of its subjects depended upon the extermination of slavery,[894]and in the letters themselves he attacked the system of American slavery in unmistakable language. In principle he stood clearly with Bourne and Duncan, as he afterwards came to the support of Garrison, although he did not use the words "immediate abolition." He held that "Avarice tends to enslave, but justice requires emancipation."[895]He heard with impatience the excuse for continued slaveholding that freedom would ruin the blacks because they were not capable of doing for themselves, and must, therefore, either all starve or steal. With sarcasm he exclaimed, "Immaculate tenderness! Astonishing sympathy! But what is to be dreaded more than such tenderness and sympathy? Who would wish to have them exercised uponhimself?... And have not many of those [slaves] who have been emancipated in America become wealthy and good citizens?... We are commanded to 'do justly and love mercy,' and this we ought to do without delay, and leave the consequences attending it to the control of Him who gave the command."[896]It has been noted in another place that Mr. Rankin was for years an active agent of the Underground Railroad, in association with a number of abolitionists of his neighborhood, among whom he was a recognized leader.[897]