VII. LIFE OF THE COLORED REFUGEES IN CANADA…

VII. LIFE OF THE COLORED REFUGEES IN CANADA

The passengers of the Underground Railroad had but one real refuge, one region alone within whose bounds they could know they were safe from reënslavement; that region was Canada. The position of Canada on the slavery question was peculiar, for the imperial act abolishing slavery throughout the colonies of England was not passed until 1833; and, legally, if not actually, slavery existed in Canada until that year. The importation of slaves into this northern country had been tolerated by the French, and later, under an act passed in 1790, had been encouraged by the English. It is a singular fact that while this measure was in force slaves escaped from their Canadian masters to the United States, where they found freedom.[551] Before the separation of the Upper and Lower Provinces in 1791, slavery had spread westward into Upper Canada, and a few hundred negroes and some Pawnee Indians were to be found in bondage through the small scattered settlements of the Niagara, Home and Western districts.

[551] "A case of this kind," says Dr. S. G. Howe, "was related to us by Mrs. Amy Martin. She says: "My father's name was James Ford.... He ... would be over one hundred years old, if he were now living.... He was held here (in Canada) by the Indians as a slave, and sold, I think he said, to a British officer, who was a very cruel master, and he escaped from him, and came to Ohio, ... to Cleveland, I believe, first, and made his way from there to Erie (Pa.), where he settled.... When we were in Erie, we moved a little way out of the village, and our house was ... a station of the U. G. R. R." The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West, by S. G. Howe, 1864, pp. 8, 9.

The Province of Upper Canada took the initiative in the restriction of slavery. In the year 1793, in which Congress provided for the rendition by the Northern states of fugitives from labor, the first parliament of Upper Canada enacted a law against the importation of slaves, and incorporated in it a clause to the effect that children of slaves then held were to become free at the age of twenty-five years.[552] Nevertheless, judicial rather than legislative action terminated slavery in Lower Canada, for a series of three fugitive slave cases occurred between the first day of February, 1798, and the last day of February, 1800. The third of these suits, known as the Robin case, was tried before the full Court of King's Bench, and the court ordered the discharge of the fugitive from his confinement. Perhaps the correctness of the decisions rendered in these cases may be questioned; but it is noteworthy that the provincial legislature would not cross them, and it may therefore be asserted that slavery really ceased in Lower Canada after the decision of the Robin case, February 18, 1800.[553]

[552] Act of 30th Geo. III.

[553] See the article entitled "Slavery in Canada," by J. C. Hamilton, LL.B., in the Magazine of American History, Vol. XXV, pp. 233-236.

The seaboard provinces were but little infected by slavery. Nova Scotia, to which probably more than to any other of these, refugees from Southern bondage fled, had by reason of natural causes, lost nearly, if not quite all traces of slavery by the beginning of our century. The experience of the eighteenth century had been sufficient to reform public opinion in Canada on the question of slavery, and to show that the climate of the provinces was a permanent barrier to the profitable employment of slave labor.

During the period in which Canada was thus freeing herself from the last vestiges of the evil, slaves who had escaped from Southern masters were beginning to appeal for protection to anti-slavery people in the Northern states.[554] The arrests of refugees from bondage, and the cases of kidnapping of free negroes, which were not infrequent in the North, strengthened the appeals of the hunted suppliants. Under these circumstances, it was natural that there should have arisen early in the present century the beginnings of a movement on the northern border of the United States for the purpose of helping fugitives to Canadian soil.[555]

[554] M. G. McDougall, Fugitive Slaves, p. 20.

[555] Ibid., p. 60; R. C. Smedley, Underground Railroad, p. 26.

Upon the questions how and when this system arose, we have both unofficial and official testimony. Dr. Samuel G. Howe learned upon careful investigation, in 1863, that the early abolition of slavery in Canada did not affect slavery in the United States for several years. "Now and then a slave was intelligent and bold enough," he states, "to cross the vast forest between the Ohio and the Lakes, and find a refuge beyond them. Such cases were at first very rare, and knowledge of them was confined to few; but they increased early in this century; and the rumor gradually spread among the slaves of the Southern states, that there was, far away under the north star, a land where the flag of the Union did not float; where the law declared all men free and equal; where the people respected the law, and the government, if need be, enforced it.... Some, not content with personal freedom and happiness, went secretly back to their old homes, and brought away their wives and children at much peril and cost. The rumor widened; the fugitives so increased, that a secret pathway, since called the Underground Railroad, was soon formed, which ran by the huts of the blacks in the slave states, and the houses of good Samaritans in the free states.... Hundreds trod this path every year, but they did not attract much public notice."[556] Before the year 1817 it is said that a single little group of abolitionists in southern Ohio had forwarded to Canada by this secret path more than a thousand fugitive slaves.[557] The truth of this account is confirmed by the diplomatic negotiations of 1826 relating to this subject. Mr. Clay, then Secretary of State, declared the escape of slaves to British territory to be a "growing evil"; and in 1828 he again described it as still "growing," and added that it was well calculated to disturb the peaceful relations existing between the United States and the adjacent British provinces. England, however, steadfastly refused to accept Mr. Clay's proposed stipulation for extradition, on the ground that the British government could not, "with respect to the British possessions where slavery is not admitted, depart from the principle recognized by the British courts that every man is free who reaches British ground."[558]

[556] S. G. Howe, The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West, pp. 11, 12.

[557] William Birney, James G. Birney and His Times, p. 435.

[558] Mr. Gallatin to Mr. Clay, Sept. 26, 1827, _Niles' Register_, p. 290.

During the decade between 1828 and 1838 many persons throughout the Northern states, as far west as Iowa, had coöperated in forming new lines of Underground Railroad with termini at various points along the Canadian frontier. A resolution submitted to Congress in December, 1838, was aimed at these persons, by calling for a bill providing for the punishment, in the courts of the United States, of all persons guilty of aiding fugitive slaves to escape, or of enticing them from their owners.[559] Though this resolution came to nought, the need of it may have been demonstrated to the minds of Southern men by the fact that several companies of runaway slaves were organized, and took part in the Patriot War of this year in defence of Canadian territory against the attack of two or three hundred armed men from the State of New York.[560]

[559] Congressional Globe, Twenty-fifth Congress, Third Session, p. 34.

[560] The Patriot War defeated a foolhardy attempt to induce the Province of Upper Canada to proclaim its independence. The refugees were by no means willing to see a movement begun, the success of which might "break the only arm interposed for their security." J. W. Loguen as a Slave and as a Freeman, p. 344.

Each succeeding year witnessed the influx into Canada of a larger number of colored emigrants from the South. At length, in 1850, the Fugitive Slave Law called forth such opposition in the North that the Underground Railroad became more efficient than ever. The secretary of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society wrote in 1851 that, "notwithstanding the stringent provisions of the Fugitive Bill, and the confidence which was felt in it as a certain cure for escape, we are happy to know that the evasion of slaves was never greater than at this moment. All abolitionists, at any of the prominent points of the country, know that applications for assistance were never more frequent."[561] This statement is substantiated by the testimony of many persons who did underground service in the North.

[561] Nineteenth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, January, 1851, p. 67.

From the other end of the line, the Canadian terminus, we have abundant evidence of the lively traffic both before and after the new act. Besides the later investigations of Dr. Howe we have the statement of a contemporary, still living. Anthony Bingey, of Windsor, Ontario, aided the Rev. Hiram Wilson and the Rev. Isaac J. Rice, two graduates of Hamilton College, in the conduct of a mission for refugees. Mr. Bingey first settled at Amherstburg, at the mouth of the Detroit River, where he kept a receiving station for fugitives, was in an excellent place for observation, and was allied with trained men, who gave themselves, in the missionary spirit, to the cause of the fugitive slave in Canada. When Mr. Bingey first went to Amherstburg, in 1845, it was a rare occurrence to see as many as fifteen fugitives arrive in a single company. In the course of time runaways began to disembark from the ferries and lake boats in larger numbers, a day's tale often running as high as thirty. Through the period of the Mexican War, and down to the beginning of Fillmore's administration, many of the fugitives from the South had settled in the States, but after 1850 many, fearing recapture, journeyed in haste to Canada, greatly increasing the number daily arriving there.[562] That there was no tendency towards a decline in the movement is suggested by two items appearing in the Independent during the year 1855. According to the first of these (quoted from the Intelligencer of St. Louis, Missouri): "The evil (of running off slaves) has got to be an immense one, and is daily becoming more aggravated. It threatens to subvert the institution of slavery in this state entirely, and unless effectually checked it will certainly do so. There is no doubt that ten slaves are now stolen from Missouri to every one that was 'spirited' off before the Douglas bill."[563] It is significant that the ardent abolitionists of Iowa and northwestern Illinois were vigorously engaged in Underground Railroad work at this time. The other item declared that the number of fugitives transported by the "Ohio Underground Line" was twenty-five per cent greater than in any previous year; "indeed, many masters have brought their hands from the Kanawha (West Virginia), not being willing to risk them there."[564]

[562] Interview with Elder Anthony Bingey, Windsor, Ontario, July 31, 1895. On this point Dr. S. G. Howe says: "Of course it [the Fugitive Slave Law] gave great increase to the emigration, and free born blacks fled with the slaves from a land in which their birthright of freedom was no longer secure." Refugees from Slavery in Canada West, p. 15.

[563] Independent, Jan. 18, 1855.

[564] Independent, April 6, 1855; see also _Von Holst's Constitutional and Political History of the United States_, Vol. V, p. 63, note.

That portion of Canada most easily reached by fugitives was the lake-bound region lying between New York on the east and Michigan on the west, and presenting a long and inviting coast-line to northern Ohio, northwestern Pennsylvania and western New York. Lower Canada was often reached through the New England states and by way of the coast-line routes. The fugitive slaves entering Canada were principally from the border slave states, Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland and Delaware. Some, however, favored by rare good fortune and possessed of more than ordinary sagacity or aided by some venturesome friend, had made their way from the far South, from the Carolinas, Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee, even from Louisiana.

The fugitives who reached Canada do not seem to have been notable; on the whole they were a representative body of the slave-class. An observer on a Southern plantation could hardly have selected out would-be fugitives, as being superior to their fellows. If he had questioned them all about their desire for liberty he would have found habitual runaways agreeing with their fellows that they were content with their present lot. The average slave was shrewd enough under ordinary circumstances to tell what he thought least likely to arouse suspicion. That such discretion did not signify lack of desire for freedom is shown not only by the numerous escapes, but by the narratives of fugitives. Said Leonard Harrod: "Many a time my master has told me things to try me; among others he said he thought of moving up to Cincinnati, and asked me if I did not want to go. I would tell him, 'No! I don't want to go to none of your free countries!' Then he'd laugh, but I did want to come--surely I did. A colored man tells the truth here,--there he is afraid to."[565] "I have known slaves to be hungry," said David West, "but when their master asked them if they had enough, they would through fear say, 'Yes.' So if asked if they wish to be free, they will say 'No.' I knew a case where there was a division of between fifty and sixty slaves among heirs, one of whom intended to set free her part. So wishing to consult them she asked of such and such ones if they would like to be free, and they all said 'No,' for if they had said yes, and had then fallen to the other heirs, they would be sold,--and so they said, 'No,' against their own consciences."[566] "From the time I was a little boy it always ground my feelings to know that I had to work for another man," said Edward Walker, of Windsor, Ontario.[567] When asked to help hunt two slave-women, Henry Stevenson, a slave in Odrain County, Missouri, at first declined, knowing that his efforts to find them would bring upon him the wrath of the other slaves. "I wouldn't go," he related; "the colored folks would 'a' killed me." In his refusal he was supported by a white man, who had the wisdom to observe that "'Twas a bad policy to send a nigger to hunt a nigger." Nevertheless, Stevenson's trustworthiness had been so often tested that he was taken along to help prosecute the search, and even accompanied the party of pursuers to Chicago, where he disappeared by the aid of abolitionists and was afterward heard of in Windsor, Ontario.[568] Elder Anthony Bingey, of the same place, said, "I never saw the day since I knew anything that I didn't want to be free. Both Bucknel and Taylor [his successive masters] liked to see their slaves happy and well treated, but I always wanted to be free."[569]

[565] Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery, 1856, p. 340.

[566] Ibid., p. 91.

[567] Detroit Sunday News Tribune, quoted by the Louisville Journal, Aug. 12, 1894.

[568] Conversation with Henry Stevenson, Windsor, Ont., July, 1895.

[569] Conversation with Elder Anthony Bingey, Windsor, Ont., July 31, 1895.

The manifestations of delight by fugitives when landed on the Canada shore is another part of the evidence of the sincerity of their aspirations for freedom. Captain Chapman, the commander of a vessel on Lake Erie in 1860, was requested by two acquaintances at Cleveland to put ashore on the Canada side two persons, who were, of course, fugitives, and he gives the following account of the landing: "While they were on my vessel I felt little interest in them, and had no idea that the love of liberty as a part of man's nature was in the least possible degree felt or understood by them. Before entering Buffalo harbor, I ran in near the Canada shore, manned a boat, and landed them on the beach.... They said, 'Is this Canada?' I said, 'Yes, there are no slaves in this country'; then I witnessed a scene I shall never forget. They seemed to be transformed; a new light shone in their eyes, their tongues were loosed, they laughed and cried, prayed and sang praises, fell upon the ground and kissed it, hugged and kissed each other, crying, 'Bress de Lord! Oh! I'se free before I die!'"[570]

[570] E. M. Pettit, Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad, pp. 66, 67. See also Chapter I, p. 14, and Chapter VI, p. 178.

The state of ignorance in which the slave population of the South was largely kept must be regarded as the admission by the master class that their slaves were likely to seize the boon of freedom, unless denied the encouragement towards self-emancipation that knowledge would surely afford. The fables about Canada brought to the North by runaways well illustrate both the ignorance of the slave and the apprehensions of his owner. William Johnson, who fled from Hopkins County, Virginia, had been told that the Detroit River was over three thousand miles wide, and a ship starting out in the night would find herself in the morning "right whar she started from." In the light of his later experience Johnson says, "We knowed jess what dey tole us and no more."[571] Deacon Allen Sidney, an engineer on his master's boat, which touched at Cincinnati, had a poor opinion of Canada because he had heard that "nothin' but black-eyed peas could be raised there."[572] John Evans, who travelled through the Northern country, and even in Canada, with his Kentucky master, was insured against the temptation to seize his liberty by the warning to let no "British nigger" get near him lest he should be slain "jess like on de battle-field."[573] John Reed heard the white people in Memphis, Tennessee, talk much of Canada, but he adds "they'd put some extract onto it to keep us from comin'."[574]

[571] Conversation with William Johnson, at Windsor, Ont., July 31, 1895.

[572] Conversation with Allen Sidney, Windsor, Ont.

[573] Conversation with John Evans, Windsor, Ont., Aug. 2, 1895.

[574] Conversation with John Reed, Windsor, Ont.

Although many disparaging things said about Canada at the South were without the shadow of verity, there were still hardships enough to be met by those who settled there. The provinces constituted for them a strange country. Its climate, raw, open and variable, and at certain periods of the year severe, increased the sufferings of a people already destitute. The condition in which many of them arrived beyond the borders, especially those who migrated before the forties, is vividly told by J. W. Loguen in his account of his first arrival at Hamilton, Canada West, in 1835. Writing to his friend, Frederick Douglass, under date of May 8, 1856, he says: "Twenty-one years ago--I stood on this spot, penniless, ragged, lonely, homeless, helpless, hungry and forlorn.... Hamilton was a cold wilderness for the fugitive when I came there."[575] The experience of Loguen corroborates what Josiah Henson said of the general condition of the fugitives as he saw them in 1830: "At that time they were scattered in all directions and for the most part miserably poor, subsisting not unfrequently on the roots and herbs of the fields.... In 1830 there were no schools among them and no churches, only occasionally preaching."[576]

[575] The Rev. J. W. Loguen as a Slave and as a Freeman, 1859, told by himself; chap. xxiv, pp. 338, 340.

[576] Father Henson's Story of His Own Life, 1858, p. 209.

The whole previous experience of these pioneers was a block to their making a vigorous initiative in their own behalf. Extreme poverty, ignorance and subjection were their inheritance. Their new start in life was made with a wretched prospect, and it would be difficult to imagine a free lot more discouraging and hopeless. Yet it was brightened much by the compassionate interest of the Canadian people, who were so tolerant as to admit them to a share in the equal rights that could at that time be found in America only in the territory of a monarchical government. By the year 1838 the fugitive host of Canada West began to profit by organized efforts in its behalf. A mission of Upper Canada was established. It was described as including "the colored people who have emigrated from the United States and settled in various parts of Upper Canada to enjoy the inalienable rights of freedom."[577] During the winter of 1838-1839, this enterprise conducted four schools, while the Rev. Hiram Wilson, who seems to have been acting under other auspices, was supervising during the same year a number of other schools in the province.[578]

[577] Mission of Upper Canada, Vol. I, No. 17, Wed., July 31, 1839.

[578] Ibid.

From this time on much was done in Canada to help the ransomed slave meet his new conditions. It was not long before the benevolent interest of friends from the Northern states followed the refugees to their very settlements as it had succored them on their way through the free states. In 1844 Levi Coffin and William Beard made a tour of inspection in Canada West. This was the first of several trips made by these two Quakers "to look after the welfare of the fugitives"[579] in that region. The Rev. Samuel J. May made two such trips, "the first time to Toronto and its neighborhood, the second time to that part of Canada which lies between Lake Erie and Lake Huron."[580] John Brown did not fail to keep himself informed by personal visits how the fugitives were faring there.[581] Men less prominent but not less interested among underground magnates were drawn to see how their former protégés were prospering; such were Abram Allen, a Hicksite Friend of Clinton County, Ohio, and Reuben Goens, a South Carolinian by birth, who became an enthusiastic coworker with the Quakers at Fountain City, Indiana, in aiding slaves to the Dominion.

[579] Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, p. 253.

[580] May, Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict, p. 303.

[581] Hinton, John Brown and His Men, p. 175.

These efforts were helpful to multitudes of negroes. Some insight into the work that was being accomplished is afforded by Levi Coffin, who gives a valuable account of his Canadian trip, September to November, 1844. Among the first places he visited was Amherstburg, more commonly known at that time by the name of Fort Malden: "While at this place, we made our headquarters at Isaac J. Rice's missionary buildings, where he had a large school for colored children. He had labored here among the colored people, mostly fugitives, for six years. He was a devoted, self-denying worker, had received very little pecuniary help, and had suffered many privations. He was well situated in Ohio, as pastor of a Presbyterian church, and had fine prospects before him, but believed that the Lord called him to this field of missionary labor among the fugitive slaves who came here by hundreds and by thousands, poor, destitute, ignorant, suffering from all the evil influences of slavery. We entered into deep sympathy with him in his labors, realizing the great need there was here for just such an institution as he had established. He had sheltered at this missionary home many hundreds of fugitives till other homes for them could be found. This was the great landing-point, the principal terminus of the Underground Railroad of the West."[582] Later Mr. Coffin and his companion "visited the institution under the care of Hiram Wilson, called the British and American Manual Labor Institute for colored children."[583] "The school was then," he reports, "in a prosperous condition." Mr. Coffin continues: "From this place we proceeded up the river Thames to London, visiting the different settlements of colored people on our way, and then went to the Wilberforce Colony.... I often met fugitives who had been at my house ten or fifteen years before, so long ago that I had forgotten them, and could recall no recollection of them until they mentioned some circumstance that brought them to mind. Some of them were well situated, owned good farms, and were perhaps worth more than their former masters.... We found many of the fugitives more comfortably situated than we expected, but there was much destitution and suffering among those who had recently come in. Many fugitives arrived weary and footsore, with their clothing in rags, having been torn by briers and bitten by dogs on their way, and when the precious boon of freedom was obtained, they found themselves possessed of little else, in a country unknown to them and a climate much colder than that to which they were accustomed. We noted the cases and localities of destitution, and after our return home took measures to collect and forward several large boxes of clothing and bedding to be distributed by reliable agents to the most needy."[584]

[582] Coffin, Reminiscences, pp. 249, 250.

[583] Ibid., p. 251.

[584] Coffin, Reminiscences, pp. 252, 253.

The government of Canada was not in advance of the public sentiment of the provinces when it gave the incoming blacks considerate treatment. It was early a puzzle in Mr. Clay's mind why Ontario and the mother country should yield unhindered entrance to such a class of colonists; his opinion of the character of the absconding slaves and of the unadvisability of their being received by Canada was expressed in a despatch of 1826 to the United States minister at London: "They are generally the most worthless of their class, and far, therefore, from being an acquisition which the British government can be anxious to make. The sooner, we should think, they are gotten rid of the better for Canada."[585] But the Canadians did not at any time adopt this view. Dr. Howe testified in 1863 that "the refugees have always received ... from the better class of people, good-will and justice, and from a few, active friendship and important assistance."[586] The attitude of the Canadian government toward this class of immigrants was always one of welcome and protection. Not only was there no obstruction put in the way of their settling in the Dominion, but rather there was the clear purpose to see them shielded from removal and to foster among them the accumulation of property.

[585] Niles' Register, Vol. XXV, p. 289.

[586] Howe, Refugees in Canada West, p. 68.

In the matter of the acquirement of land no discrimination was made by the Canadian authorities against the fugitive settlers. On the contrary these unpromising purchasers were encouraged to take up government land and become tillers of the soil. In 1844 Levi Coffin found that "Land had been easily obtained and many had availed themselves of this advantage to secure comfortable homesteads. Government land had been divided up into fifty-acre lots, which they could buy for two dollars an acre, and have ten years in which to pay for it, and if it was not paid for at the end of that time they did not lose all the labor they had bestowed on it, but received a clear title to the land as soon as they paid for it."[587]

[587] Levi Coffin, Reminiscences, pp. 252, 253.

In 1848 or 1849 a company was formed in Upper Canada, under the name of the Elgin Association, for the purpose of settling colored families upon crown or clergy reserve lands to be purchased in the township of Raleigh. It was intended thus to supply the families settled with stimulus to moral improvement.[588] To whom is to be attributed the origin of this enterprise is not altogether clear; one writer ascribes it to the influence of Lord Elgin, Governor-General of Canada from 1849 to 1854, and asserts that a tract of land of eighteen thousand acres was allotted for a refugee settlement in 1848;[589] another says it was first projected by the Rev. William King, a Louisiana slaveholder, in 1849.[590] Mr. King's own statement is that a company of fifteen slaves he had himself emancipated became the nucleus of the settlement in 1849; and that under an act of incorporation procured by himself in 1850 an association was formed to purchase nine thousand acres of land and hold it for fugitive settlers.[591]

[588] Benjamin Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery, p. 292.

[589] George Bryce, Short History of the Canadian People, p. 403.

[590] Benjamin Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery, p. 291.

[591] S. G. Howe, Refugees from Slavery in Canada West, pp. 107, 108.

The Canadian authorities facilitated the efforts made by the friends of the fugitives to provide this class such supplies as could be gathered in various quarters, and they entered into an arrangement with the mission-agent, the Rev. Hiram Wilson, to admit all supplies intended for the refugees free of customs-duty. Mr. E. Child, a mission-teacher, educated at Oneida Institute, New York, received many boxes of such goods at Toronto;[592] and at a hamlet called "the Corners," a few miles from Detroit, a Mr. Miller kept a depot for "fugitive goods." Supplies were also shipped to Detroit direct for transmission across the frontier.[593]

[592] History of Knox County, Illinois (published by Charles C. Chapman and Co.), p. 203. Here it is stated: "Mr. Wilson arranged with the authorities to have all supplies for the fugitive slaves admitted free of customs duty. Many were the large well-filled boxes of what was most needed by the wanderer taken from the wharf at Toronto during that winter [1841] by E. Child, mission-teacher. He was then a student at Oneida Institute, N.Y., but for many years has resided in Oneida, this county. He went into Canada for the purpose of teaching the fugitives."

[593] Conversation with Jacob Cummings, a fugitive from Tennessee, now living in Columbus, O. Mr. Cummings was at one time a collecting agent for a settlement at Puce, Ont. He told the author, "While agent, I was sent to Sandusky. I would collect goods for the settlement, and ship it to Detroit, marked 'Fugitive Goods.' Brother Miller, at the Corners, a little place about fifteen miles from Detroit, would take care of these, and Canada wouldn't charge any duty on 'fugitive goods.'"

The circumstances attending the settlement of the refugees from slavery in Canada were favorable to their kindly reception by the native peoples. It was generally known that they had suffered many hardships on their journey northward, and that they usually came with nought but the unquenchable yearning for a liberty denied them by the United States. The movement to Canada had begun when the inter-lake portion of Ontario was largely an unsettled region; and indeed, during the period of the refugees' immigration, much of the interior was in the process of clearing. Moreover, the movement was one of small beginnings and gradual development. It brought into the country what it then needed--agricultural labor to open up government land and to help the native farmers.

In the elbow of land lying between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, the fugitives were early received by the Indians under Chief Brant, having possessions along the Grand River and near Burlington Bay. Finding hospitality on these estates, the negroes not infrequently adopted the customs and mode of life of their benefactors, and remained among them.[594]

[594] J. C. Hamilton, Magazine of American History, Vol. XXV, p. 238.

In the territory extending westward along the lake front white settlers were working their clearings, which were beginning to take on the aspect of cultivated farms. But farm hands were not plentiful, and the fugitive slaves were penniless, and eager to receive wages on their own account. Mr. Benjamin Drew, who made a tour of investigation among these people in 1855, and wrote down the narratives of more than a hundred colored refugees, gives testimony to show that in some quarters at least, as in the vicinity of Colchester, Dresden and Dawn, the number of laborers was not equal to the demand, and that the negroes readily found employment.[595] It was not to be expected that the field-hands and house-servants of the South could work to the best advantage in their new surroundings; a gentleman of Windsor told Mr. Drew that immigrants whose experience in agricultural pursuits had been gained in Pennsylvania and other free states were more capable and reliable than those coming directly to Canada from Southern bondage.[596] But such was the disposition of the white people in different parts of Canada, and such the demand for laborers in this developing section, that the Canada Anti-Slavery Society could say of the refugees, in its Second Report (1853): "The true principle is now to assume that every man, unless disabled by sickness, can support himself and his family after he has obtained steady employment. All that able-bodied men and women require is a fair chance, friendly advice and a little encouragement, perhaps a little assistance at first. Those who are really willing to work can procure employment in a short time after their arrival."[597]

[595] Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery, pp. 311, 368.

[596] Ibid., p. 322.

[597] Quoted by Drew, p. 326.

The fact that there were large tracts of good land in the portion of Canada accessible to the fugitive was a fortunate circumstance, for the desire to possess and cultivate their own land was wide-spread among the escaped slaves. This eagerness drew many of them into the Canadian wilderness, there to cut out little farms for themselves, and live the life of pioneers. The extensive tract known as the Queen's Bush, lying southwest of Toronto and stretching away to Lake Huron, was early penetrated by refugees. William Jackson, one of the first colored settlers in this region, says that he entered it in 1846, when scarcely any one was to be found there, that other fugitive slaves soon followed in considerable numbers and cleared the land, and that in less than two years as many as fifty families had located there. The land proved to be good, was well timbered with hard wood, and farms of from fifty to a hundred acres in extent were soon put in cultivation.[598] In some other parts of Canada the same tendency to spread into the outlying districts and secure small holdings appeared among the colored people. Mr. Peter Wright, the reeve of the town of Colchester, noted this fact, and attributed the clearance of much land for cultivation to fugitive slaves.[599] That such land did not always remain in the possession of this class of pioneers was due to their ignorance of the forms of conveyancing, and doubtless sometimes to the sharp practices of unscrupulous whites.[600]

[598] Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery, p. 190.

[599] Ibid., p. 367.

[600] Ibid., pp. 367, 369; Austin Steward, Twenty-two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman, p. 272.

Encouragement was not lacking to induce refugees to take up land; several fugitive aid societies were organized for this purpose, and procured tracts of land and founded colonies upon them. The most important of the colonies thus formed were the Dawn Settlement at Dresden, the Elgin Settlement at Buxton and the Refugees' Home near Windsor.[601] These three communities deserve special consideration, inasmuch as they illustrate an interesting movement in which benevolent persons in Canada, England and the United States coöperated to improve the condition of the refugees.

[601] Howe, Refugees from Slavery in Canada West, pp. 68, 69.

The Dawn Settlement, the first of the three established, may be said to have had its beginning in the organization of a school called the British and American Institute.[602] The purpose to found such a school seems to have been cherished by the missionary, the Rev. Hiram Wilson, and his coworker, Josiah Henson, as early as 1838; but the plan was not undertaken until 1842.[603] In that year a convention of colored persons was called to decide upon the expenditure of some fifteen hundred dollars collected in England by a Quaker named James C. Fuller; and they decided, under suggestion, to start "a manual-labor school, where children could be taught those elements of knowledge which are usually the occupations of a grammar-school; and where the boys could be taught, in addition, the practice of some mechanic art, and the girls could be instructed in those domestic arts which are the proper occupation and ornament of her sex."[604] It was decided to locate the school at Dawn, and accordingly three hundred acres of land were purchased there, upon which were erected log buildings and schoolhouses, and soon the work of instruction was begun. It was "an object from the beginning, of those who ... managed the affairs of the Institute, to make it self-supporting, by the employment of the students, for certain portions of their time, on the land."[605] The advantages of schooling on this basis attracted many refugee settlers to Dresden and Dawn. The Institute also gave shelter to fugitive slaves "until they could be placed out upon the wild lands in the neighborhoods to earn their own subsistence."

[602] Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery, p. 308.

[603] The Life of Josiah Henson, formerly a Slave, as narrated by Himself, 1852, p. 115. See also Father Henson's Story of His Own Life, 1858, p. 171. Mr. Drew ascribes the honor of the original conception of this Institute to the Rev. Hiram Wilson. (See A North-Side View of Slavery, p. 311.) Mr. Henson, after asserting that he and Mr. Wilson called the convention of 1838, continues, "I urged the appropriation of the money to the establishment of a manual-labor school...." (Father Henson's Story of His Own Life, p. 169.) It appears that both Wilson and Henson were placed on the committee on site. As they were friends and coworkers, it is safe to accord them equal shares in the undertaking.

[604] Father Henson's Story of His Own Life, p. 169.

[605] The Life of Josiah Henson, formerly a Slave, as narrated by Himself, p. 115.

The Rev. Mr. Wilson served the Institute during the first seven years of its existence, teaching its school, and ministering to such refugees as came. The number of "boarding-scholars" with which he began was fourteen, and at that time "there were no more than fifty colored persons in all the vicinity of the tract purchased."[606] In 1852 there were about sixty pupils attending the school, and the settlers on the land of the Institute had increased to five hundred;[607] while other colonies in the same region had, collectively, a population of between three thousand and four thousand colored people.[608] From what has been said it is easy to see that the influence of Dawn Institute was considerable; its managers were not content that it should instruct the children of colored persons only; they extended the advantages of the school to the children of whites and Indians as well. Adult students were also admitted, and varied in number from fifty-six to one hundred and sixteen.[609] The good results of the policy thus pursued are apparent in the character and habits of the communities that developed under the influence of the Institute.

[606] Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery, p. 311.

[607] _First Annual Report of the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada_, p. 17. See also Drew's North-Side View, p. 311.

[608] Life of Josiah Henson, formerly a Slave, as narrated by Himself, p. 118.

[609] Ibid., p. 117.

Concerning these communities Mr. Drew observed: "The colored people in the neighborhood of Dresden and Dawn are generally prosperous farmers--of good morals.... But here, as among all people, are a few persons of doubtful character, who have not been trained 'to look out for a rainy day,'--and when these get a little beforehand they are apt to rest on their oars.... Some of the settlers are mechanics,--shoemakers, blacksmiths and so forth. About one-third of the adult settlers are in possession of land which is, either in whole or in part, paid for."[610] In 1855, the year in which these observations were made, the Institute had already passed the zenith of its usefulness, and its buildings were fast falling into a state of melancholy dilapidation. The cause of this decline is probably to be found in the bad feeling, neglect and failure arising out of a divided management.[611]

[610] A North-Side View of Slavery, p. 309.

[611] Father Henson's Story of His Own Life, pp. 182-186.

The origin of the Elgin Settlement is discussed above; whether or not it was projected by Lord Elgin in 1848, it is certain that in 1849 the Rev. William King, a Presbyterian clergyman from Louisiana, had manumitted and settled slaves on this tract. This company, fifteen in number, formed the nucleus of a community named Buxton, in honor of Thomas Fowell Buxton, the philanthropist, and the rapid growth of the settlement thus begun seems to have led to the incorporation of the Elgin Association in August, 1850. It is probable that Mr. King early became the chief agent in advancing the interests of the settlers, his support being derived mainly from the Mission Committee of the Presbyterian Church of Canada. The plan that was carried out under his management provided for the parcelling of the land into farms of fifty acres each, to be had by the colonists at the government price, two dollars and fifty cents per acre, payable in twelve annual instalments. No houses inferior to the model of a small log house prescribed by the improvement committee were to be erected,[612] although settlers were permitted to build as much better as they chose. A court of arbitration was established for the adjudication of disputes, and a day-school and Sunday-school gave much needed instruction.

[612] The dimensions of the model house-were twenty-four by eighteen feet, and twelve feet high.

The growth of the Elgin Settlement is set forth in a series of reports, which afford many interesting facts about the enterprise. The number of families that entered the settlement during the first two years and eight months is given as seventy-five;[613] a year later this number was increased to one hundred and thirty families, comprising five hundred and twenty persons;[614] the year following there were a hundred and fifty families in Buxton;[615] and eight years later, in 1862, when Dr. Howe visited Canada, he was informed by Mr. King that the population of the settlement was "about one thousand,--men, women and children," and that two thousand acres had been deeded in fee simple to purchasers, one-third of which had been paid for, principal and interest. The impressions of Dr. Howe are well worth quoting: "Buxton is certainly a very interesting place. Sixteen years ago it was a wilderness. Now, good highways are laid out in all directions through the forest; and by their side, standing back thirty-three feet from the road, are about two hundred cottages, all built on the same pattern, all looking neat and comfortable. Around each one is a cleared place, of several acres, which is well cultivated. The fences are in good order, the barns seem well-filled; and cattle and horses, and pigs and poultry, abound. There are signs of industry and thrift and comfort everywhere; signs of intemperance, of idleness, of want, nowhere. There is no tavern, and no groggery; but there is a chapel and a schoolhouse.

[613] Third Annual Report, September, 1852, quoted by Drew in North-Side View of Slavery, p. 293.

[614] Fourth Annual Report, September, 1853. See Drew's work, p. 294.

[615] Fifth Annual Report, September, 1854; Drew's work, p. 295.

"Most interesting of all are the inhabitants. Twenty years ago most of them were slaves, who owned nothing, not even their children. Now they own themselves; they own their houses and farms; and they have their wives and children about them. They are enfranchised citizens of a government which protects their rights.... The present condition of all these colonists, as compared with their former one is very remarkable."[616] Mr. King told Dr. Howe that only three of the whole number that settled in the colony had their first instalment on their farms paid for them by friends;[617] and he summed up his experience as follows: "This settlement is a perfect success.... Here are men who were bred in slavery, who came here and purchased land at the government prices, cleared it, bought their own implements, built their own houses after a model, and have supported themselves in all material circumstances, and now support their schools, in part.... I consider that this settlement has done as well as a white settlement would have done under the same circumstances."[618]

[616] Howe, Refugees from Slavery in Canada West, pp. 70, 71.

[617] Ibid., p. 108.

[618] Ibid., p. 110.

The colony known as Refugees' Home was the outgrowth of a suggestion of Henry Bibb, who was himself a fugitive slave. Soon after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, he proposed the formation of "a society which should 'aim to purchase thirty thousand acres of government land ... in the most suitable sections of Canada ... for the homeless refugees from American slavery to settle upon.'" The association, organized in the summer of 1852, set about carrying out Bibb's plan and accomplishing a work similar to the objects of the Elgin Association. The money required for the purchase of land was to be obtained partly through contributions and partly through sales of the farms first marketed. Each family of colonists was to have twenty-five acres, "five of which" it was to "receive free of cost, provided" it should "within three years from the time of occupancy, clear and cultivate the same." For the remaining twenty acres the original price--two dollars an acre--was to be paid in nine equal annual payments. Those obtaining land from the Association, whether by purchase or gift, were to hold it for fifteen years before having the right to dispose of it.

In the first year of the association's existence forty lots of twenty-five acres each were taken up, and arrangements were made for a school and church. Mrs. Laura S. Haviland was employed as a teacher in the fall of 1852, and at once opened both a day-school and a Sunday-school. She also organized an unsectarian or Christian Union Church, which later entered the Methodist Episcopal denomination. The material condition of the settlers Mrs. Haviland describes for us in a few words. She says: "They had erected a frame-house for school and meeting purposes. The settlers had built for themselves small log houses, and cleared from one to five acres each on their heavily timbered land, and raised corn, potatoes and other garden vegetables. A few had put in two and three acres of wheat, and were doing well for their first year."[619]

[619] Laura S. Haviland, A Woman's Life Work, pp. 192, 196, 201.

The three colonies described in the foregoing pages are typical of a number of communities settled upon lands purchased in Canada for their use, and regulated by rules drawn up by the associations that had sprung into existence for the benefit of the homeless refugees. The assumption upon which these associations proceeded was that they were to deal with a class of persons who, notwithstanding their present destitution, were desirous of living worthily in the state of freedom to which they had just attained, a class needing direction, instruction and opportunity for self-help rather than sustained charity. It was intended that fugitives should not be left to work out alone their own salvation, but that the deficiencies of ignorance and inexperience should be mitigated for those willing to profit by the good offices of the missions. The fugitive aid society did not, as we have already seen, try to prevent the fugitives from settling together in the form of communities; on the contrary, such colonization was the inevitable result of their procedure, and doubtless to them it seemed desirable. Such is the suggestion contained in the arrangement under which farms were sold to purchasers by the Elgin and Refugees' Home associations: settlers on the tract of the former agreed to hold their farms for at least ten years without transferring their rights; settlers on the land of the latter were to keep their holdings for a minimum of fifteen years without transfer. In the dealings of the Home Association this restriction, we are told, caused some dissatisfaction.

Whether this segregation of the colored people in localities more or less apart from the white population of Canada was a good thing for the refugees has been questioned. Dr. S. G. Howe studied the life of this class in Canada in 1862 as the representative of the United States Freedman's Inquiry Commission, and wrote a report which is indispensable for a knowledge of the conditions surrounding the colored settlers in the provinces. He summarizes his judgment as follows: "The negroes, going into an inhabited and civilized country, should not be systematically congregated in communities. Their natural affinities are strong enough to keep up all desirable relations without artificial encouragement. Experience shows that they do best when scattered about, and forming a small proportion of the whole community.

"Next, the discipline of the colonies, though it only subjects the negroes to what is considered useful apprenticeship, does prolong a dependence which amounts almost to servitude; and does not convert them so surely into hardy, self-reliant men, as the rude struggle with actual difficulties, which they themselves have to face and to overcome, instead of doing so through an agent.

"Taken as a whole, the colonists have cost to somebody a great deal of money and a great deal of effort; and they have not succeeded so well as many who have been thrown entirely upon their own resources....

"It is just to say that some intelligent persons, friends of the colored people, believe that in none of the colonies, not even in Buxton, do they succeed so well, upon the whole, as those who are thrown entirely upon their own resources."[620]

[620] The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West, pp. 69, 70.

Upon examination, these objections do not seem to be well grounded. It is noteworthy that of the prime movers in the organization of the three colonies we have considered, two, Josiah Henson and Henry Bibb, were themselves fugitive slaves; the third, the Rev. William King, had been at one time a slave-owner, and the fourth, the Rev. Hiram Wilson, was a missionary among the refugees for many years. These men were persons of wide observation and experience among fugitive slaves. It is safe to say that there were no men in Canada that knew better the disadvantages under which the average fugitive, just arrived from the South, was called upon to begin the struggle for a livelihood. And it will be admitted that there were none in or out of Canada more zealous and self-sacrificing in promoting the refugee's interests. These men evidently believed that the fugitive was not in a condition to do the best for himself upon his first arrival on free soil, that he needed to be delivered in some degree from the weight of his ignorance, and guided in his wholesome ambition to secure a home.

To the eyes of some Canadian observers those runaways who had lingered a while in the Northern states before crossing the border into Canada appeared to be more vigorous, independent and successful in all undertakings than their less experienced brethren. Whatever superiority they may have possessed that is not assignable to natural endowment, cannot safely be set down to the unchecked play upon them of rough experiences, or to their facing and vanquishing great discouragements unaided. The runaway slaves that lived in the free states were not as a class left to fight their way to attainable success alone. They settled among friends in anti-slavery neighborhoods, whether in city or country, and were stimulated by the practical interest manifested by these persons in their welfare. They were thus enabled to benefit by those educative influences that the missions of Canada were organized to supply. It is not improbable that some of the refugees whose self-reliant behavior called out the approval of Dr. Howe and others belonged to this group of partly disciplined fugitives. Dr. Howe must have seen many such persons, for his journey in Canada West was not made until 1862, after the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 had driven many of them from the states into the provinces. Drew remarks pertinently: "The Fugitive Slave Bill drove into Canada a great many who had resided in the free states. These brought some means with them, and their efforts and good example have improved the condition of the older settlers."[621]

[621] A North-Side View of Slavery, p. 367.

The other group of Canadian refugees--those whose passage had been direct from the condition of abject dependence, where the whole routine of life had been determined by the master or overseer, to the condition of active independence and responsibility, where the readiness to take hold and to care for one's own interests were required--this group doubtless contained persons of ability and energy; but they must have been in the minority. During the later years of its history the Underground Railroad made flight comparatively easy for all who once got out of the slave states, so that frail women and young children often went through to Canada with little or no difficulty. There were of course many individuals of extraordinary ability, who had enjoyed in slavery a wider range of experience than was vouchsafed the average slave; but such people could take care of themselves anywhere. Here we are concerned with the large number that needed to have the way pointed out to them if they were ever to become the possessors of their own homes; they were not sufficiently informed to originate and carry on successful building and loan associations for themselves, but they certainly could profit by an institution devised to serve the same purpose. If it be admitted that ownership of land and all that that implies was a good thing for the refugee, then it is difficult to see how that idea could have been better inculcated far and wide than through the methods employed by the Canadian organizations.

Besides enabling refugees to secure homes for themselves there were other offices the associations conceived to be a part of their duty, and the performance of which is set forth in their records. The first and most urgent of these was to supply immediate relief to the wayworn travellers continually arriving; with this was combined the necessity of helping these persons to find employment. The British and American Institute at Dawn was obliged to conduct, as part of its work, what would now be called perhaps a supply and employment bureau. Josiah Henson, one of the founders of the Institute, describing this branch of the work, says: "Many of these poor creatures arrive destitute of means, and often in want of suitable clothing, and these, as far as possible, have been supplied them. Since the passage of the late Fugitive Slave Bill, ... they have arrived in large numbers at the Institute, and have been drafted off among their brethren who had been previously settled, and who are now making every effort and sacrifice to meet their destitute circumstances."[622] Henry Bibb, of the Refugees' Home, as early as 1843 saw the need of maintaining a stock of supplies at Windsor out of which to relieve the immediate necessities of fugitives.[623] The missionary, Isaac J. Rice, kept a similar supply room at Amherstburg.[624] It appears from all this that the recognition of the deplorable destitution of arriving fugitives was general among the aid societies and their representatives, and that prompt action was taken to meet wants that could brook no delay.

[622] The Life of Josiah Henson, as narrated by Himself, p. 117.

[623] Conversation with the Rev. Jacob Cummings, a refugee now living at Columbus, O.

[624] Ibid.

Another service performed by these colonization societies was that of providing superior schools for the colored people; education for all that could take it was one of the cardinal features of their programme. The state of public sentiment in some places in Canada was such that colored children were either altogether excluded from the public schools, or, if allowed to enter, they were annoyed beyond endurance by the rude behavior of their fellow-pupils. In some places they braved the prejudice against them, but the numbers courageous enough to do this were insignificant. Under such circumstances the best that could be done by the friends of the black race was to open schools under private management. That the societies were not averse to mixed schools is shown by the fact that white pupils were admitted in various instances to classes formed primarily for colored children.[625] This need of schools did not appeal alone to the colonization societies. It was seen and responded to by other organizations; thus the English Colonial Church and School Society thought it advisable to locate schools at London,[626] Amherstburg,[627] Colchester[628] and perhaps other places; and certain religious bodies of the United States felt it incumbent on them to support school-teachers (ten or more) in different parts of Canada.[629] Besides the schools thus provided a few were conducted by individuals; as examples of this latter class may be named a private school at Chatham taught by Alfred Whipper,[630] a colored man, and another at Windsor managed by Mrs. Mary E. Bibb, the wife of Henry Bibb mentioned above.[631]

[625] _First Annual Report of the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada_, 1852, Appendix, p. 22.

[626] Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery, p. 148.

[627] Ibid., p. 349.

[628] Ibid., p. 369.

[629] _First Annual Report of the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada_, 1852, p. 22.

[630] Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery, p. 236.

[631] Ibid., p. 322.

The supervision of the colonies maintained by their respective associations does not appear to have been unduly strict. Occasionally controversies came up over what was thought by the refugees to be improper assumption of authority by some agent or representative of the association, but an examination of the terms under which land was taken by the intending settlers brings to light only such rules as were meant to foster intelligence, morality and sobriety among the colonists. The aid societies were not only zealous for education. They also provided against those evil influences to which they thought the negroes were most likely to succumb. Thus, for example, in the case of the Buxton[632] and Refugees' Home settlements the manufacture and sale of intoxicants were forbidden. Such regulations seem to have been sustained by the sentiment of the communities for which they were made, and are not known to have been the source of opposition. Indeed, the directors of Buxton specially commended the habits of sobriety prevalent among the people whose best interests they were striving to promote,[633] and the Rev. William King found satisfaction in the fact that a saloon opened on the borders of that settlement could not find customers enough to support it, and closed its doors within a twelvemonth. His testimony relating to the standard of social purity mantained by the colonists was creditable in its showing, and indicated a high sense of morality scarcely to be expected among a people stained by the gross practices of slave-life.[634] Of the colored people in the neighborhood of Dawn Institute the reports were equally good. Mr. Drew found them to be "generally very prosperous farmers--of good morals, and mostly Methodists and Baptists."[635] Mr. Henson related with evident pride that out of the three thousand or four thousand colored people congregated in the settlements about Dawn not one had "been sent to jail for any infraction of the laws during the last seven years (1845-1852)."[636]

[632] Ibid., pp. 294, 325.

[633] Third Annual Report (1852), quoted by Drew, p. 293.

[634] Howe, Refugees from Slavery in Canada West, pp. 109, 110.

[635] Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery, p. 309.

[636] The Life of Josiah Henson, formerly a Slave, as narrated by Himself, p. 118.

The widest range of dissatisfaction appeared at the Refugees' Home, where the fugitives are reputed to have been unduly burdened. Thomas Jones, not a colonist, and without any personal grievances to complain of, voiced the feeling to Mr. Drew. After relating some annoying changes made in the regulations as to the time in which clearings were to be made, as to the size of the houses to be erected and so forth, he declared that the settlers "doubt about getting deeds, ... The restrictions in regard to liquor, and not selling [their land] under so many years, nor the power to will ... property to ... friends, only to children if ... [they] have any, make them dissatisfied. They want to do as they please." From this it appears that the population of Refugees' Home was not altogether content with the local government under which it lived, but apparently the complaints made were to be attributed more to the unjust changes in the charter of the colony than to the moral régime the Home Association sought to enforce.

In general we may say, then, that in so far as the three colonies considered were typical of the whole class, there was nothing inherent in the provisions of their constitutions or in the nature of their organizations to place their members in a kind of servitude. As property owners, these citizens became subject to legitimate obligations, which might have been differently arranged, but could scarcely have been less onerous or of better intention. The requirement that ownership should be for a period of ten or fifteen years, made by the Elgin and Refugees' Home societies, was perhaps annoying; but the explanation, if not the full justification, of such a demand lay in the evident desire of the societies to give all purchasers ample time in which to make their payments, and in the irresponsibility of the class with which they were dealing.

It is impossible to tell how many landed colonies there were in Canada. Dr. Howe, perhaps the best contemporary observer, speaks indefinitely of benevolent persons that formed organizations at various periods for the relief and aid of the refugees, and says that these organizations generally took the form of societies for procuring tracts of land and settling colonies upon them, but he gives no further details.[637] Whatever their number, it is quite certain that these colonies comprised but a small part of the refugee population. The natural tendency was for fugitives to drift at once to the towns, where there was immediate prospect of relief and employment. In this way many of the Canadian centres came to have an increasing proportion of colored inhabitants. The towns first receiving such additions were naturally those of mercantile importance in the lake traffic of the decades before the Civil War. Thus, Amherstburg and Windsor, Port Stanley and Port Burwell, St. Catherines, Hamilton and Toronto, and Kingston and Montreal, early became important places of resort for escaped slaves.

[637] Howe, Refugees from Slavery in Canada West, p. 69.

The movement was normally from these and other centres on the lake shore, or near it, to the interior. How rapid it was we can only judge by the few chance indications that remain. During Drew's travels in Canada West he learned that in 1832 the town of Chatham was a mere hamlet comprising a few houses and two or three shops, although the oldest deed of the place on record is dated 1801. Steamboats did not begin to ply on the river Sydenham between Chatham and Detroit until 1837. But long before this year, and, in fact, at the first settlement of the town, colored people began to come in.[638] When Levi Coffin made his first trip to Canada, in 1844, he visited a number of settlements of colored people scattered along the river Thames north of Dawn, and found the colony at Wilberforce already established.[639] This colony had been founded as early as 1830, and because it was originally settled by a group of emancipated slaves, it soon began to attract new settlers from the incoming stream of runaways. By 1846 the more distant interior was invaded. In that year the long strip of country stretching from the western extremity of Lake Ontario across to Lake Huron, and designated on the general map as Queen's Bush, was entered by pioneers who had escaped from slavery. This region was not surveyed until about 1848, and by that time there were as many as fifty families located there.[640] Some time during the years 1845 to 1847, the Rev. R. S. W. Sorrick went as far north as Oro, where he found "some fifty persons settled, many comfortable and doing well, but many [suffering] a great deal from poverty."[641] The surveying of the tract called Queen's Bush, and the subsequent arranging of the terms of payment for land already occupied, caused a number of colored settlers to sell their clearings in "the Bush" and move away. Some of these, it appears, went south to Buxton, but some went north to the shores of Georgian Bay and located at Owen Sound.[642] From this testimony it is certain that by 1850 fugitive slaves had found their way in considerable numbers throughout the inter-lake portion of Canada West.

[638] A North-Side View of Slavery, p. 235.

[639] Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, p. 521.

[640] Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery, p. 189.

[641] Ibid., p. 190.

[642] Drew, North-Side View of Slavery, p. 190.

Farther east, the Province of Quebec attracted negroes from the Southern states as early as the thirties; and they began to make pilgrimages northward by way of secret lines of travel through New England. By 1850, there were at least five or six of these lines, all well patronized, considering their remoteness from slaveholding territory. Maritime routes, by way of ports along the New England coast to New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and even Cape Breton Island, seem also to have existed. A case is cited by the Rev. Austin Willey in his book, entitled Anti-Slavery in the State and Nation, in which more than twenty colored refugees were sent from Portland to New Brunswick at one time, soon after the rescue of Shadrach in Boston, in 1851. It is reported that there are still settlements of ex-slaves in Nova Scotia, near Halifax;[643] and the statement has recently been made that "there are at least two negro families living in Inverness County, Cape Breton, who are, in all probability, the descendants of fugitive slaves."[644]

[643] A statement to this effect, which appeared in the Marine Journal of New York, is quoted in McClure's Magazine for May, 1897, p. 618.

[644] See the letter signed "D. F.," printed in McClure's Magazine, May, 1897, p. 618.

As regards this movement into the Eastern provinces, no detailed information can be had. Even in the Western lake-bound region, it was the towns that were the most accessible for the traveller desirous of studying the condition of fugitives; most visitors contented themselves with the briefest memorials of their visits; and those whose accounts are at the same time helpful and extended, describe or even mention only a limited number of abiding-places of escaped slaves. Though Drew notices in his book but thirteen communities, and Dr. Howe refers to eleven only, numerous other places are mentioned by other observers. Sketching his first visit to Canada, Mr. Coffin writes: "Leaving Gosfield County, we made our way to Chatham and Sydenham, visiting the various neighborhoods of colored people. We spent several days at the settlement near Down's Mills, and visited the institution under the care of Hiram Wilson, called the British and American Manual Labor Institute.... From this place we proceeded up the river Thames to London, visiting the different settlements of colored people on our way, and then went to the Wilberforce colony."[645] After naming a list of twelve towns near which refugees had settled, Josiah Henson says: "Others are scattered in small numbers in different townships, and at Toronto there are about four hundred or five hundred variously employed...."[646] Such testimony goes to show that the refugee population of Canada was widely distributed, both in the cities and towns and in the country.

[645] Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, p. 251. The italics are my own.

[646] The Life of Josiah Henson, formerly a Slave, as narrated by Himself, p. 100.

If the information at hand in regard to the distribution of the refugees is unsatisfactory, it can hardly be expected that the numbers can now be ascertained. The official figures of the successive Canadian censuses are untrustworthy. Dr. Howe, who studied them, concluded that, "It is impossible to ascertain the number of exiles who have found refuge in Canada since 1800.... It is difficult, moreover, to ascertain the present number (1862). The census of 1850 is confused. It puts the number in Upper Canada at 2,502 males and 2,167 females. But in a note it is stated, 'there are about 8,000 colored persons in Western Canada.' This word "about" is an admission of the uncertainty; and as if to make that uncertainty greater, the same census in another part puts the number in Western Canada at 4,669." The census of 1860 Dr. Howe found to be equally unreliable. In giving the colored population as 11,223, it underrated the number greatly, as he discovered by looking into the records of several cities and by making inquiry of town officers. In this manner he learned that the number of colored people living in St. Catherines was about 700, although the census showed only 472; in Hamilton, probably more than 500, despite the government showing of only 62; in Toronto, 934, although the census gave but 510; in London, Canada West, as the mayor estimated, there were 75 families of colored people, whereas the census showed only 36 persons. "There has been no movement of the colored population," Dr. Howe tells us, "sufficient to explain such discrepancies; and the conclusion is that the census of 1850, and that of 1860, included some of the colored people in the white column."[647]

[647] Howe, The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West, pp. 15, 16.

If the information contained in the census reports of the Canadas relating to the refugee population of the provinces is misleading, so also is it true that little value can be attached to the estimates made at various times by visitors to the communities of fugitives, most of whom had inadequate data upon which to base their conclusions. These estimates not only differ widely, but sometimes leave room for doubt as to what geographical area and period of time they are intended to cover. Coffin in 1844 was told that there were about forty thousand fugitives in Canada;[648] but eight years later Henson estimated the number at between twenty thousand and thirty thousand, and daily increasing.[649] In the same year (1852) the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada in its First Annual Report stated that there were about thirty thousand colored residents in Canada West.[650] The Rev. Hiram Wilson said from the lecture platform that there were sixty thousand fugitives in Canada, and Elder Anthony Bingey, a coworker with Mr. Wilson, who heard this estimate given by his friend, informed the writer that Mr. Wilson had travelled over the country from Toronto westward and was as competent a judge as could be found in Ontario.[651] John Brown attended a conference at Chatham in the spring of 1858, and his biographer, Mr. R. J. Hinton, thinks there were probably not less than seventy-five thousand fugitives living in Canada West at that time.[652] The Rev. W. M. Mitchell, a negro missionary writing in 1860, was of the opinion that there were sixty thousand colored people in Upper Canada, that fifteen thousand of these were free-born, and that the remaining forty-five thousand were fugitive slaves from the United States.[653] The Rev. Dr. Willes, Professor of Divinity in Toronto College, is quoted as having said that there were about sixty thousand emancipated slaves in Canada, the most of whom had escaped from bondage.[654] Dr. Howe came to the conclusion in 1863 that the whole number of slaves enfranchised by residence in the provinces was between thirty and forty thousand. He thought that at the time of his visit the population did not fall below fifteen thousand nor exceed twenty thousand; although other observers, he said, estimated it as ranging from twenty thousand to thirty thousand.[655]

[648] Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, p. 253.

[649] The Life of Josiah Henson, formerly a Slave, as narrated by Himself, Appendix, p. 99.

[650] Quoted by Howe in _The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West_, p. 17.

[651] Conversation with Mr. Bingey, Windsor, Ont., July 31, 1895.

[652] John Brown and His Men, p. 171.

[653] The Underground Railroad, p. 127.

[654] Ibid., p. 166.

[655] The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West, pp. 15, 17.

Besides the diversity of the figures here presented, it should be noted that most of the estimates refer only to Canada West; and further that they take no account of the losses under a high death-rate, due to the action of the new climatic conditions upon the settlers. Travellers were not in possession of the elements necessary for a computation, the resident missions were tempted to overstate, and the Canadian officials did not know how to secure data, and, perhaps, did not try to secure them fully. One can only say that the numerous lines of Underground Railroad would not have been taxed beyond their capacity to convey a number of refugees equal to the highest estimate given above during the period these lines are known to have been active.

The great majority of escaped slaves were possessed of but little more than the boon of freedom when they arrived in what was for them "the promised land." Church missions, anti-slavery societies and colonies found in them worthy subjects for their benefactions, which were intended to put the recipients in the way of earning their own livelihood. The need of clothing, shelter and employment was provided for as promptly as circumstances would allow, and the fugitives soon came to realize that the efforts made in their behalf were to help them attain that independence of which they had been so long deprived.

As the region to which the refugees had recourse in largest numbers was well covered with forests, and was beginning to be cleared for tillage, a common occupation among them was that of the woodsman. Many were able to hire themselves to the native farmers to cut timber, while many others, who arranged to lease or buy land, went to work to clear garden patches and little farms for themselves. Josiah Henson sought to develop a lumber industry in the neighborhood of Dawn by setting up a sawmill on the farm of the British and American Institute, and shipping its products to Boston and New York.[656] Such work, in a climate to which they were unaccustomed, was an experience beyond the strength of some of the fugitives; and their exposure to the cold of the Canadian winter sowed the seeds of consumption in many.[657]

[656] Father Henson's Story of His Own Life, p. 173 et seq.

[657] This is substantiated by the testimony of various Canadian refugees.

Farming appears to have been the occupation naturally preferred by the refugees, and probably the majority of them looked forward to owning farms.[658] It was the pursuit their masters followed, and for which they themselves were best adapted. The way to it was open through the demand for farm-hands on the part of many white settlers, and the special encouragement frequently needed was supplied by the example and aid of one or another of the colonies.

[658] _First Annual Report of the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada_, p. 15.

It is not surprising that a considerable number of the fugitives contented themselves with the present enjoyment of their newly acquired liberty, and neglected to make provision for the future. Such persons were quite ready to work, but were slow to understand how they could acquire land in time, and secure the full profits of their labor to themselves. The weight of enforced ignorance, dependence and poverty was upon them. Not infrequently they entered into profitless bargains, leasing wild lands on short terms, and finding themselves dispossessed when their clearings were about ready for advantageous cultivation.[659] Their knowledge of agriculture was scanty, and their planting, in consequence, often injudicious. They were, however, zealous to learn. The Rev. R. S. W. Sorrick, who gave some instruction to the settlers at Oro in the art of farming, declared them to be a most teachable people.[660] The refugees at Colchester appear to have been equally open-minded to the practical suggestions given them in a series of lectures on "crops, wages and profit" delivered before them by Mr. Henson.

[659] Father Henson's Story of His Own Life, pp. 165, 166; Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery, pp. 196, 369.

[660] Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery, p. 120.

It is well known that among the slave-owners of the border states the practice existed widely of entrusting some of their negroes with the responsibilities of farm management; and that in the same portion of the South slaves were often permitted to hire their own time for farm labor; thousands of runaways also had gathered experience in the free states before their emigration to Canada; hence one is prepared in a measure to understand the rapid strides made by a large class of the negro population in the country of their adoption. Many of these people already had a gauge of their ability, and were not afraid to go forward in the acquirement of lands and homes of their own. To the advancement made by this numerous class is due the favorable comment called forth from observing persons, both Canadians and visiting Americans. Dr. Howe has left us some interesting information concerning the condition of refugee farmers in Canada. He found some cultivating small gardens of their own near large towns, where they had a ready market for the produce they raised; others, more widely scattered, tilled little farms, which for the most part were clear of encumbrance; these farms were "inferior to the first-class farms of their region in point of cultivation, fences, stock and the like," but were "equal to the average of second-class farms"; their owners lacked the capital, intelligence and skill of the best farmers, but, far from being lazy, stupid or thriftless, supported themselves in a fair degree of comfort, and occupied houses not easily distinguishable in appearance from the farmhouses of their white neighbors. The miserable hut of the worthless negro squatter was occasionally to be seen, but usually the rude cabin and small clearing marked the spot where a newly arrived fugitive had begun his home, which in due course was to pass through successive stages until it should become a well-cleared farm, with good buildings and a large stock of animals and tools.[661]

[661] The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West, pp. 65, 66. See also Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery, p. 368.

A fact deplored by some friends of the refugees was the inclination to congregate in towns and cities.[662] A committee of investigation appointed by the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada reported in 1852 that, although many fugitives were scattered through the various districts, the larger number was massing in certain localities, those named being Elgin, Dawn and Colchester village settlements, Sandwich, Queen's Bush, Wilberforce, Hamilton and St. Catherines, together with the Niagara district and Toronto.[663] According to Josiah Henson the towns about which these people were gathering were Chatham, Riley, Sandwich, Anderton (probably Anderson), Malden, Colchester, Gonfield (doubtless Gosfield), London, Hamilton and the colonies at Dawn and Wilberforce.[664] Other centres undoubtedly existed, though no exhaustive list of such places could be made from the meagre accounts left us.

[662] Mitchell, The Underground Railroad, p. 128.

[663] First Annual Report of the Society, pp. 16, 17.

[664] The Life of Josiah Henson, formerly a Slave, as narrated by Himself, p. 100.

The movement to the towns was natural, for friends and employment were more easily to be found there than elsewhere. Certain parts or quarters of the towns rapidly filled up with the negroes, and the bonds of race and sympathy came into full play, causing constant accretions of new settlers. This was especially true of Fort Malden or Amherstburg, for years the principal port of entry for fugitives landing from the Michigan and Ohio borders. The result in this and similar cases was unsatisfactory; the people seemed not to do as well as in other places.[665] In Hamilton and Toronto, we are told, the dwellings of the blacks were scattered among those of the whites, instead of being crowded together in a single suburban locality more or less distinct from the city of which it formed a part.[666] However, local conditions existing in Toronto, such as rent charges, tended to confine the colored people to the northwest section of the city.[667]

[665] Dr. Howe quotes the following statement from Mr. Brush, town clerk of Malden: "A portion of them (the colored people) are pretty well behaved, and another portion not.... A great many of these colored people go and sail (are sailors) in the summer-time, and in the winter lie around, and don't do much.... We have to help a great many of them, more than any other class of people we have here. I have been clerk of the council for three years, and have had the opportunity of knowing. I think the council have given more to the colored people than to any others." See also A North-Side View of Slavery, p. 58.

[666] A North-Side View of Slavery, p. 62.

[667] Ibid., p. 94.

A wide range of occupations was open to the refugees in the towns; besides the lighter kinds of service about hotels and other public houses, and the work of plastering and whitewashing, often performed by negroes, various trades were followed, such as blacksmithing, carpentering, building, painting, mill-work and other handicrafts. There were good negro mechanics in Hamilton, Chatham, Windsor, Amherstburg and other places. A few were engaged in shopkeeping, or were employed as clerks, while a still smaller number devoted themselves to teaching and preaching.

As a class the fugitives in the towns, as in the country, were accounted steady and industrious, and their dwellings were said to be "generally superior to those of the Irish, or other foreign emigrants of the laboring class," and "far superior to the negro huts upon slave plantations, which many of them formerly inhabited."[668] Dr. J. Wilson Moore, of Philadelphia, visited the refugee communities in various Canadian towns, for example at Chatham, London and Wilberforce, and was favorably impressed with what he saw; with the orderly deportment of the crowds of colored people at Chatham while returning from a celebration of the anniversary of the West Indian emancipation, with the air of neatness and comfort displayed by the homes of the fugitives at London, with the advance from log cabins to brick and frame-houses made by the settlers at Wilberforce.[669] The weight of evidence supplied by Mr. Drew was unquestionably favorable to the view that the refugees were making substantial progress. He found the condition of the colored people in Toronto such as to be a proper cause of satisfaction for the philanthropist; many men in Hamilton were well-to-do; concerning those living in London he learned that some were highly intelligent and respectable, but that others wasted their time and neglected their opportunities; he noted that there was great activity among the negroes at Chatham, where they engaged in a large variety of manual pursuits; at Windsor, almost all the members of this class had comfortable homes, and some owned neat and handsome houses; at Sandwich a few were house-owners, the rest were tenants; in Amherstburg the assurance was given that the colored people of Canada were doing better than the free negroes in the United States; the settlers at New Canaan were reported to be making extraordinary progress, considering the length of time they had lived there; and out of a colored population of seventy-eight at Gosfield all of the heads of families, with two or three exceptions, were freeholders.[670] Dr. Howe, who visited the houses of the colored people in the outskirts of Chatham and other large places, described them as being for the most part small and tidy two-story houses with garden lots about them, neatly furnished, the tables decently spread and plentifully supplied. He was convinced that the fugitive slaves lived better than foreign immigrants in the same region, and clothed their children better.[671]

[668] Howe, The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West, p. 63.

[669] Still, Underground Railroad Records, p. xvii.

[670] A North-Side View of Slavery, pp. 94, 119, 147, 234, 321, 344, 348, 376, 378.

[671] The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West, pp. 63, 64. See also Mitchell's Underground Railroad, pp. 130, 131, 133, 135, 137-139, 142-144, 146, 148 et seq.

The relation of the slave to his wife and children was a precarious one in the South, especially in the border region from which most of the Canadian exiles came. Slave-breeding for the Southern market was extensively carried on in Virginia, Kentucky and other border states; slave-traders made frequent trips through this section; and their coming brought consternation, distress and separation to many a slave-family. These and other violations of the domestic ties might be expected to react on the home life of the slave-family, tending to discourage regard for the forms of family life, and to take away incentive to constancy. In view of such degradation it is surprising to note the care taken by many refugees for the formal legitimation of the alliances made by them in slavery. Once secure in their freedom and in their domestic relations, they began to substitute for the marriage after "slave fashion" the legal form of marriage, which they saw observed about them in Canada. Dr. Howe noticed that the fugitives settled themselves in families, respected the sanctity of marriage, and showed a general improvement in morals.[672]

[672] The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West, pp. 95, 101, Appendix, pp. 109, 110. In her book, A Woman's Life Work, p. 193, Mrs. Laura S. Haviland reports some interesting cases of this sort.

This recognition of a new standard of social virtue signifies a great gain on the part of the refugees. As the withholding of any real instruction from the slaves in the South helped to brutalize them, so their moral elevation in Canada went hand in hand with their enlightenment through schools and religious teaching. What advantages were afforded them in the way of education in their new abiding-place, and what measure of benefit did they derive from these opportunities?

It appears that under the Canadian law colored people were permitted either to send their children to the common schools or to have separate schools provided from their proportionate share of the school funds. In some districts, however, local conditions stood in the way of the education of colored children. Many of the parents did not appreciate the need of sending their children to school regularly; it often happened that they were too destitute to take advantage of these opportunities; again, they were unaccustomed to the enjoyment of equal privileges with the whites and were timid about assuming them. The children, unused to the climate of the new country, perhaps also thinly clad, were sickly and often unable to go to school.[673]

[673] Mitchell, The Underground Railroad, pp. 140, 164, 165.

Prejudice was also not wanting in some quarters among the whites. In the town of Sandwich, on the Detroit River, in 1851 or 1852, the feelings of the two people were much agitated over the question of mixed schools.[674] The towns of Chatham, London and Hamilton appear also to have been more or less affected by prejudice against the negro.[675] Partly owing to this prejudice, and partly to their own preference, the colored people, acting under the provision of the law that allowed them to have separate schools, set up their own schools in Sandwich and in many other parts of Ontario.[676] Drew incidentally noted the existence of separate schools at Colchester, Amherstburg, Sandwich, Dawn and Buxton; the existence of private schools at London, Windsor and perhaps one or two other places; and the presence of an extremely small number of colored children in the common schools at Hamilton and London. Concerning Toronto, he tells us that no distinction existed there in regard to school privileges. Such figures as Drew supplies show the separate, private and mission schools to have been more numerously attended than the public or common schools. The former furnished the conditions under which whatever appreciation of education there was native in a community of negroes, or whatever taste for it could be awakened there, was free to assert itself unhindered by real or imagined opposition. That the refugees were capable of a genuine interest in the schools provided for them, even under the most disheartening circumstances, appears from the fact that "many of the colored settlers were attracted to Dresden and Dawn by the preferred advantages of education on the industrial plan in the Dawn Institute."[677] Adults and children both attended; the schools of the mission-workers were intended to reach as many as possible of a constituency made up largely of grown persons. An evening school for adults was established in Toronto, and had a good attendance.[678] Sunday-schools were an important accessory, furnishing, as they did, opportunities to many whose week days were full of other cares. Mrs. Haviland's experience was probably that of mission-teachers in other parts of Canada. On Sundays her schoolhouse was filled to overflowing, many of her congregation coming five or six miles to get to the meeting. The Bible was read with eagerness by those whose ignorance required prompting at every word. The oppression of past years was forgotten, for the hour, in the pleasure of learning to read the Word of God. An aged couple, past eighty, were among the most regular attendants.[679] The spread of the earnest desire for knowledge shown in these meetings would suffice to explain an observation made by Dr. Howe in 1863 to the effect that a surprisingly large number could then read and write.[680]

[674] Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery, pp. 341, 342.

[675] Ibid., pp. 118, 147, 235.

[676] Ibid., p. 341.

[677] Ibid., p. 308.

[678] _First Annual Report of the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada_, p. 15.

[679] A Woman's Life Work, pp. 192, 193.

[680] The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West, p. 77.

An agency illustrative of the refugees' desire for self-improvement was the association made up of local societies called "True Bands." The first of these clubs was organized at Amherstburg or Malden in September, 1854, and in less than two years there were fourteen such societies in various parts of Canada West. The total membership of the association is not known, but the True Band of Malden comprised six hundred persons, and that of Chatham, on the first enrolment, three hundred and seventy-five. Persons of both sexes were admitted to membership, and a small monthly payment was required. The objects of the association were comprehensive; they included the improvement of the schools, the increase of the school attendance among the colored people, the abatement of race prejudice, the arbitration of disputes between colored persons, the employment of a fund for aiding destitute persons just arriving from slavery, the suppression of begging in behalf of refugees by self-appointed agents, and so forth. The True Band at Malden did much good work; and in all other places where the societies were formed it is reported that excellent results were secured. These clubs demonstrated their ability by concerted action to care for numerous strangers as they arrived in Canada after their long pilgrimage.[681]

[681] Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery, pp. 236, 237.

Another object of the True Band association was to prevent divisions in the church, and as far as possible to heal those that had already occurred. This provision was apparently intended to serve as a check on the disposition of the refugees to multiply churches. "Whenever there are a few families gathered together," wrote one observer, "they split up into various sects and each sect must have a meeting-house of its own.... Their ministers have canvassed the United States and England, contribution-box in hand; and by appealing to sectarian zeal, got the means of building up tabernacles of brick and wood, trusting to their own zeal for gathering a congregation...."[682] This eagerness to build churches has been criticised as consuming much of the time and substance of the exiles, and causing division where union was desirable. But if this side of the religious life and activities of the refugees calls for condemnation, another side, which was fostered by the new conditions, was the more marked manifestation of the religious nature of the blacks in what has been well called in contrast with their emotionalism the higher forms of conscience, morality and good works.[683]

[682] Howe, The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West, p. 92.

[683] Ibid.

The minds of many of the Canadian exiles were ever going back to the friends and loved ones they had left behind them on the plantations of the South. Each new band of pilgrims as it came ashore at some Canadian port was scanned by little groups of negroes eagerly looking for familiar faces. Strange and solemn reunions after years of separation and of hardship took place along the friendly shores of Canada. But the fugitive that was safe in the promised land was anxious to assist fortune, and as soon as he had learned to write or could find an acquaintance to write for him, was likely to send a letter to some trusted agent of the Underground Railroad for advice or assistance in an attempt to release some slave or family of slaves from their thraldom. Many, we know, took a more dangerous method than this, and went personally to seek their relatives in the South, and piloted them safely back to English soil; but the appeal to anti-slavery friends in the States, while probably less effective, sometimes secured the desired results. William Still, the chairman of the Acting Vigilance Committee of Philadelphia,--a position that brought him in contact with hundreds of escaped slaves as they were being sent beyond our northern frontier,--was the recipient of numerous letters entreating his aid for the deliverance of the kinsmen of refugees.[684]

[684] Still, Underground Railroad Records, 2d ed., pp. 59, 65, 105, 137, 193, 249, 263, 291, 293, 337, 385, 448, 490.

Fugitive slaves were admitted to citizenship in the provinces on the same terms as other immigrants. Many of them became property owners in the course of time, paid their allotted share of the taxes, and thus gained the franchise; Dr. Howe examined the records of several towns in 1862 and made comparisons of the amount of taxable property owned by whites and blacks. According to his statement the proportion of white rate or tax payers to the white population of Malden was in the ratio of one to three and one-third; that of the colored ratepayers of the town to the colored population, one to eleven. The average amount paid by the whites was $9.52, while that paid by the blacks was $5.12. In Chatham the white ratepayers were "about one to every three and one-half of the white population, and the colored about one to every thirteen of the colored population." The average tax paid by white and black was $10.63 and $4.98 respectively. At Windsor it appears that the proportion of ratepayers among the whites was as one to seven and one-fourth, and among the blacks it was as one to five. Here the per capita average was $18.76 for the former, and $4.18 for the latter.[685] These towns, it is to be noted, were not colonies; and in them the fugitives were offered no peculiar inducements to become the owners of property. All things considered, the showing is highly creditable for the negroes.

[685] The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West, pp. 61, 62.

The fact that they had been slaves did not debar the refugees from the exercise of whatever political rights they had acquired. The negro voters used their privilege freely in common with the native citizens, allying themselves with the two regular parties of Canada, the Conservative and the Reform.[686] In some communities negroes were elected to office. The Rev. William King, head of the Buxton Settlement, has mentioned the offices of pathmasters, school trustees, and councillors as those to which colored men were chosen within his knowledge. These, he said, were as high as the negro had then attained, and he thought that white men would refuse to vote for a black running for Parliament.[687] Dr. J. Wilson Moore, a friend of the refugees, said of them in 1858 that their standing was fair, and that the laws of the land made no distinction. He observed that they did jury duty with their white neighbors, and served as school directors and road commissioners. On the whole, he thought, they were as much respected as their intelligence and virtue entitled them to be.[688]

[686] Still, Underground Railroad Records, p. xxvii.

[687] Howe, The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West, Appendix, p. 108.

[688] Still, Underground Railroad Records, p. xvii.

In view of the remarkable progress made by the refugees and of their general serviceableness as settlers in the provinces, it is easy to understand why the Canadian government maintained its favorable attitude towards them to the end of the long period of immigration. In 1859 the Governor-General testified to the favorable opinion the central government entertained of the fugitives as settlers and citizens by assuring the Rev. W. M. Mitchell that "We can still afford them homes in our dominions"; and the Parliament of Ontario manifested its interest in their continued welfare by voting to incorporate the Association for the Education and Elevation of the Colored People of Canada upon the showing that the association would thereby be enabled to extend its philanthropic labors among the blacks.[689] The Canadian authorities seem to have become established in the view reached after a candid and prolonged investigation by Dr. Howe, that the refugees "promote the industrial and material interests of the country and are valuable citizens."[690]

[689] Mitchell, The Underground Railroad, pp. 155, 156.

[690] The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West, p. 102. William Still, who made a trip through Canada West in 1855, expressed a view similar to that above quoted, and added the words: "To say that there are not those amongst the colored people in Canada, as every place, who are very poor, ... who will commit crime, who indulge in habits of indolence and intemperance, ... would be far from the truth. Nevertheless, may not the same be said of white people, even where they have had the best chances in every particular?" Underground Railroad Records, p. xxviii.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

VIII. FUGITIVE SETTLERS IN THE NORTHERN STATES

There were many fugitives from bondage that did not avail themselves of the protection afforded by the proximity of Canadian soil. For various reasons these persons remained within the borders of the free states; some were drawn by the affinities of race to seek permanent homes in communities of colored people; some, keeping the stories of their past lives hidden, found employment as well as oblivion among the crowds in cities and towns; some, choosing localities more or less remote from large centres of population, settled where the presence of Quakers, Wesleyan Methodists, Covenanters or Free Presbyterians gave them the assurance of safety and assistance; and some, after a severe experience of pioneer life in the woods of Canada, preferred to run their chances on the southern shores of the lakes, where it was easier to gain a livelihood, and whence escape could be made across the line at the first intimation of danger.

As one would suppose, it is impossible to determine with any accuracy how many fugitive settlers there were in the North at any particular time. Estimates both local and general in character have come down to us, and, naturally enough, one is inclined to attach greater value to the former than to the latter, on the score of probable correctness, but here the investigator is met by the extreme paucity of examples, which, as it happens, are confined to two towns in eastern Massachusetts, namely, Boston and New Bedford. In October, 1850, the Rev. Theodore Parker stated publicly that there were in Boston from four hundred to six hundred fugitives.[691] Concerning the refugee population of New Bedford our information is much less definite, for it is reported that in that place there were between six hundred and seven hundred colored citizens, many of whom were fugitives.[692] Nevertheless one cannot doubt that the representatives of this class were numerous and widely scattered throughout the whole territory of the free zone, for reference is made by many surviving abolitionists not only to individual refugees or single families of refugees that dwelt in their neighborhood, but even to settlements a considerable part of whose people were runaway slaves. Where conditions were peculiarly favorable it was not an unknown thing for runaways to conclude their journeys when scarcely more than within the borders of free territory. The Rev. Thomas C. Oliver, of Windsor, Canada, is authority for the statement that fugitive settlers swarmed among their Quaker protectors at Greenwich, New Jersey, on the very edge of a slave state.[693] In communities situated at greater distance from the sectional line, like Columbus[694] and Akron,[695] Ohio, Elmira[696] and Buffalo,[697] New York, and Detroit, Michigan, many fugitives are known to have lived. The Rev. Calvin Fairbank relates that, while visiting Detroit in 1849, he discovered several families he had helped from slavery living near the city. He went to see these families, and afterward wrote concerning them: "Living near the Johnsons, and like them contented and comfortable, I found the Stewart and Coleman families, for whom I had also lighted the path of freedom."[698] In the vicinity of Sandy Lake, in the northwestern part of Pennsylvania, there was a colony of colored people, most of whom were runaway slaves.[699]

[691] Chronotype, Oct. 7, 1850.

[692] Clipping from the Commonwealth, preserved in a scrap-book relating to Theodore Parker, Boston Public Library.

[693] Conversation with Mr. Oliver, Windsor, Ont., Aug. 2, 1895.

[694] Conversation with the Rev. James Poindexter, Columbus, O., summer of 1895.

[695] History of Summit County, Ohio, pp. 579, 580.

[696] Letters of Mrs. Susan L. Crane, Elmira, N.Y.

[697] See p. 250, this chapter.

[698] The Chicago Tribune, Jan. 29, 1893.

[699] Letter of John F. Hogue, Greenville, Pa., Nov. 25, 1895.

Such evidence, which is local in its nature, should be considered in conjunction with the general estimates of those persons that expressed opinions after wide observation in regard to the whole number of fugitive settlers in the North. The most indefinite of these contemporary opinions is that of the veteran underground helper, Samuel J. May, who states that "hundreds ventured to remain this side of the Lakes."[700] Other judges attempt to put their estimates into figures; thus, Henry Wilson thinks that by 1850 twenty thousand had found homes in the free states;[701] Mr. Franklin B. Sanborn, admitting the inherent difficulty of the calculation, places the number at from twenty-five thousand to fifty thousand;[702] and the Canadian refugee, Josiah Henson, wrote in 1852: "It is estimated that the number of fugitive slaves in the various free states ... amounts to 50,000."[703]

[700] Some Recollections of our Anti-Slavery Conflict, p. 297.

[701] Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, Vol. II, p. 304; see also E. B. Andrews' History of the United States, Vol. II, p. 36.

[702] Conversation with Mr. Sanborn, Cambridge, Mass., March, 1897.

[703] The Life of Josiah Henson, formerly a Slave, as narrated by Himself, p. 97.

Fugitives that thus dwelt in the Northern states for a longer or shorter period did so at their own risk, and in general against the advice of their helpers. Their reliance for safety was altogether upon their own wariness and the public sentiment of the communities where they lived, and until slavery perished in the Civil War they were subjected to the fear of surprise and seizure. The Southern people apparently regarded their right to recover their escaped slaves as unquestionable as their right to reclaim their strayed cattle, and they were determined to have the former as freely and fully recognized in the North as the latter;[704] and it might be added that there were not a few people in the North quite willing to admit the slaveholder's right freely to reclaim his human property, and to aid him in doing so. What the sentiment was that prevailed in the North during the twenties and thirties of the present century is evidenced in certain laws enacted by the legislatures of some of the states in line with the Federal Slave Law of 1793. Thus, in an act passed by the assembly of Pennsylvania, March 25, 1826, provision was made for the issuance by courts of record of the commonwealth of certificates or warrants of removal for negroes or mulattoes, claimed to be fugitives from labor;[705] and in a law enacted by the legislature of Ohio, February 26, 1839, it was provided that any justice of the peace, judge of a court of record, or mayor should authorize the arrest of a person claimed as a fugitive slave on the affidavit of the claimant or his agent, and that the judge of a court of record before whom the fugitive was brought should grant a certificate of removal upon the presentation of satisfactory proof.[706]

[704] James H. Fairchild, _The Underground Railroad, Tract No. 87_, in Vol. IV, Western Reserve Historical Society, p. 106.

[705] G. M. Stroud, A Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery, 2d ed., 1856, pp. 281, 282.

[706] Statutes of the State of Ohio, 1841, collated by J. B. Swan, pp. 595-600.

Among those that paid homage to such laws as these, and thus made the North an unsafe refuge for slaves, were to be found representatives of all classes of society. Samuel J. May opens to view the convictions of some of the most cultured people of his day by the following incidents related concerning two well-known New England clergymen. "The excellent Dr. E. S. Gannett, of Boston, was heard to say, more than once, very emphatically, and to justify it, 'that he should feel it to be his duty to turn away from his door a fugitive slave,--unfed, unaided in any way, rather than set at naught the law of the land.'

"And Rev. Dr. Dewey, whom we accounted one of the ablest expounders and most eloquent defenders of our Unitarian faith,--Dr. Dewey was reported to have said at two different times, in public lectures or speeches during the fall of 1850 and the winter of 1851, that 'he would send his mother into slavery, rather than endanger the Union, by resisting this law enacted by the constituted government of the nation.' He has often denied that he spoke thus of his 'maternal relative,' and therefore I allow that he was misunderstood. But he has repeatedly acknowledged that he did say, 'I would consent that my own brother, my own son, should go, ten times rather would I go myself into slavery, than that this Union should be sacrificed.'"[707] After the occurrence of the famous Jerry rescue at Syracuse, October 1, 1851, many newspapers representing both political parties emphatically condemned the successful resistance made to the law by the abolitionists as "a disgraceful, demoralizing and alarming act."[708]

[707] Some Recollections of our Anti-Slavery Conflict, p. 367.

[708] Some Recollections of Our Anti-Slavery Conflict, p. 380. The newspapers named by Mr. May are, The Advertiser and _The American_ of Rochester, The Gazette and Observer of Utica, The Oneida Whig, The Register, The Argus and The Express of Albany, The Courier and Inquirer and The Express of New York.

There were not wanting in almost every community members of the shiftless class of society that were always ready to obstruct the passage of fugitive slaves to the North, and whose most vigorous exercise was taken in the course of some slave-hunting adventure. The Rev. W. M. Mitchell, who had had this class to contend with in the performance of his underground work during a number of years in Ohio, characterized it in a description, penned in 1860, in which he sets forth one of the conditions that made the Northern states an unsafe refuge for self-liberated negroes. "The progress of the Slave," he wrote, "is very much impeded by a class of men in the Northern States who are too lazy to work at respectable occupations to obtain an honest living, but prefer to obtain it, if possible, whether honestly or dishonestly, by tracking runaway slaves. On seeing advertisements in the newspapers of escaped slaves, with rewards offered, they, armed to the teeth, saunter in and through Abolition Communities or towns, where they are likely to find the object of their pursuit. They sometimes watch the houses of known Abolitionists.... We are hereby warned, and for our own safety and that of the Slave, we act with excessive caution. The first discoverer of these bloody rebels communicates their presence to others of our company, that the entire band in that locality is put on their guard. If the slave has not reached us, we are on the lookout, with greater anxiety than the hunters, for the fugitive, to prevent his falling into the possession of those demons in human shape. On the other hand should the Slave be so fortunate as to be in our possession at the time, we are compelled to keep very quiet, until the hunter loses all hopes of finding him, therefore gives up the search as a bad job, or moves on to another Abolition Community, which gives us an opportunity of removing the Fugitive further from danger, or sending him towards the North Star...."[709]

[709] The Underground Railroad, pp. 13, 14.

It is not to be supposed, of course, that the business of slave-hunting was carried on mainly by the persons here described in such uncomplimentary terms. Persons of this type contented themselves generally, no doubt, with acting as spies and informers, and rarely engaged in the excitement of a slave-hunt except as the aids of Southern planters or their agents. If it is true that there was a sentiment averse to slavery prevailing through many years in the North, it is also true that the residents of the free states for the most part conceded the right of Southerners to pursue and recover their fugitives without hindrance from their Northern neighbors. The free states thus became what the abolitionists called the "hunting-ground" of the South, and as early as 1830 or 1835 the pursuit of slaves began to attract wide attention. During the years following many localities, especially in the middle states, were visited from time to time by parties on the trail of the fleeing bondman, or seeking out the secluded home of some self-freed slave; and after the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 Southerners became more energetic than before in pushing the search for their escaped chattels. It has been recorded that "more than two hundred arrests of persons claimed as fugitives were made from the time of the passage of the Bill to the middle of 1856. About a dozen of these were free persons, who succeeded in establishing the claim that they never had been slaves; other persons, equally free, were carried off. Half a dozen rescues were made, and the rest of these cases were delivered to their owners. These arrests took place more frequently in Pennsylvania than in any other Northern state. Many fugitives were caught and carried back, of whom we have no accounts, save that they were seen on the deck of some river steamboat, in the custody of their owners, without even passing through the formality of appearing before a commissioner. About two-thirds of the persons arrested as above had trials. When the arrests to the number of two hundred, at least, can be traced, and their dates fixed, during six years, we may suppose that the Bill was not, as some politicians averred, practically of little consequence."[710]

[710] Weiss, Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker, Vol. II, p. 93.

Concerning the efficiency of the new law there is a difference of opinion among the contemporary writers that commented upon it; but there could be no disagreement as to the distress into which it plunged some of the refugees long resident in the free states. In not a few instances these persons had married, acquired homes, and were rearing their families in peace and happiness. Under the Fugitive Slave Act some of these settlers were seized upon the affidavit of their former owners, and with the sanction of the federal authority were carried back into slavery. Among the many cases that might be cited the following will serve to illustrate the misfortunes ever ready to be precipitated upon fugitive settlers in the Northern states. In 1851 John Bolding, claimed as the property of a citizen of Columbia, South Carolina, was arrested in Poughkeepsie, New York, and taken back to the South. Bolding was a young man of good character, recently married, and the possessor of a small tailor shop in Poughkeepsie.[711] In August, 1853, George Washington McQuerry, of Cincinnati, was remanded to slavery in Kentucky. He had lived several years in Ohio, had married a free woman, and they had three children.[712] In September, 1853, a family of colored persons at Uniontown, Pennsylvania, were claimed as slaves by a Virginian. Their statement that they had been permitted by their master to visit friends in Fayette County did not prevent their immediate restoration to him.[713] In May, 1857, Addison White, a runaway from Kentucky, was found living near Mechanicsburg, Ohio, where he had been at work about six months earning means to send for his wife and children. Some of the abolitionists of the neighborhood prevented his reclamation.[714] In three of these cases at least the reënslavement of the refugees was prevented by an abolition sentiment locally strong enough to lead to the purchase of the slaves from their claimants; but it is noteworthy that public opinion in the neighborhoods where these runaways lived was unable to shield them from capture.

[711] The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims, by Samuel May, Jr., 1861, p. 19.

[712] Ibid., p. 31. See Appendix B, p. 374.

[713] Ibid., p. 68 et seq.

[714] See Appendix B, p. 375.

The refugees that preferred to settle in the Northern states rather than in Canada naturally made homes for themselves in anti-slavery communities among tried friends. Here they could rest with some assurance upon the benevolence of these localities and feel safe, although their liberty was still in danger. A slave-hunter in entering such neighborhoods was obliged to move with great caution; he was in the midst of strangers, with few allies, and his scheme was likely to fail if his presence became known. Sometimes, when he was in the very act of leading the captive back to the South in bonds, he would find his progress interrupted by a crowd, his authority questioned, his return to the office of a magistrate insisted upon, and ultimately, perhaps, his prisoner released by a procedure more or less formal. The slave-hunter that incautiously flourished weapons and made threats was likely to be arrested and subjected to such additional delays and inconveniences as would render his undertaking expensive as well as vexatious. There can be no doubt that this was the experience of many slave-owners that sought to recover their servants in the free states. Mr. Clay touched on this point, April 22, 1850, in presenting petitions to the United States Senate from four citizens of Kentucky. These persons, he said, "state that each of them has lost a slave.... That these slaves have taken refuge in the state of Ohio, and that it is in vain for them to attempt to recapture them; that they cannot go there and attempt to recover their property without imminent hazard to their lives."[715] This statement, reiterating the idea contained in the petitions themselves, namely, that the danger attending pursuit was great, is too strong in reference to a large number of the abolition communities in the Northern states, in many of which non-resistance principles were advocated. At the same time it must be remembered that the usual methods of slave-catchers were not conciliatory to the people among whom they went, and that their bravado sometimes secured for them rough treatment at the hands of a mob, especially if the number of colored people present was large enough to warrant their venting their outraged feelings.

[715] Congressional Globe, New Series, Vol. XXII, Part I, p. 793.

The difficulty of recovering slave property in the North had been considerable for some years, and it was steadily growing greater. The uncertainty of reclamation in the large number of cases made the whole business unprofitable and undesirable for slave-owners. A writer in the North American Review for July, 1850, says, "Though thousands of slaves have escaped by crossing the Ohio River, or Mason and Dixon's line, during the last five years, no attempt has been made to reclaim them in more than one case out of a thousand."[716] If one takes this statement as meant to convey merely the idea that the number of pursuits was extremely small in proportion to the number of escapes there will be no difficulty in accepting it, for probably this was the fact down to 1850; and the explanation of it, so far as can be gathered from the lips of Southern men, is to be found in the strong probability of failure in undertaking these costly enterprises. Thus Mr. Mason, of Virginia, in his argument in favor of a new fugitive slave law, declared that, under the existing conditions, "you may as well go down into the sea and endeavor to recover from his native element a fish which has escaped from you, as expect to recover a ... fugitive. Every difficulty is thrown in your way by the population.... There are armed mobs, rescues. This is the real state of things."[717]

[716] F. Bowen on "Extradition of Fugitive Slaves," Vol. LXXI, p. 252 et seq.

[717] Congressional Globe, Thirty-first Congress, First Session, p. 1583; also M. G. McDougall, Fugitive Slaves, p. 31.

The law of 1850 was intended to remove the occasion for such complaints on the part of slaveholders, and secure them in the recovery and possession of their property. The effect of its provisions upon the South was to arouse slave-owners to greater activity in the pursuit of their chattels, while in the North the effect was to increase greatly the determination in the minds of many to resist the enforcement of the law. Despite the severe penalties it levelled against those that should be guilty of shielding the refugee, the expression of sympathy for fugitive settlers was open and hearty in many quarters; and public meetings were held by abolitionists to proclaim defiance to the law and protection to the fugitive. At Lowell, Massachusetts, an immense Free Soil meeting adopted resolutions inviting former residents of the city to return from Canada, where they had taken refuge;[718] at Syracuse, New York, a gathering of all parties declared its abhorrence of the Fugitive Slave Law, and formed an association or vigilance committee "so that the Southern oppressors may know that the people of Syracuse and its vicinity are prepared to sustain one another in resisting the encroachments of despotism";[719] at Boston an indignation meeting was held "for the denunciation of the law and the expression of sympathy and coöperation with the fugitive." Among the resolutions adopted at this meeting, one advised "the fugitive slaves and colored inhabitants of Boston and the neighborhood to remain with us, for we have not the smallest fear that any one of them will be taken from us and carried off to bondage; and we trust that such as have fled in fear will return to their business and homes"; another resolution proposed the appointment of a vigilance committee "to secure the fugitives and colored inhabitants of Boston and vicinity from any invasion of their rights by persons acting under the law."[720] In Ashtabula County, Ohio, a meeting at Hartsgrove resolved, "that we hold the Fugitive Slave Law in utter contempt ... and that we will not aid in catching the fugitive, but will feed him, and protect him with all the means in our power, and that we will pledge our sympathy and property for the relief of any person in our midst who may suffer any penalties for an honorable opposition ... to the requirements of this law."[721] In other portions also of the free states meetings were held in which the purpose was avowed to protect fugitive slaves.[722]

[718] Wilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Vol. II, p. 306.

[719] Samuel J. May, Some Recollections of Our Anti-Slavery Conflict, p. 353.

[720] John Weiss, Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker, Vol. II, p. 94.

[721] Article by the Rev. S. D. Peet, in History of Ashtabula County, Ohio, pp. 33, 34.

[722] "No sooner was the deed done, the Fugitive Slave Act sent forth to be the law of the land, than outcries of contempt and defiance came from every free state, and pledges of protection were given to the colored population. It is not within the scope of my plan to attempt an account of the indignation meetings that were held in places too numerous to be even mentioned here." S. J. May, Some Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict, p. 349.

The change of sentiment in the North from passive acquiescence in the law to active resistance to it is best seen, perhaps, in the history of the so-called personal liberty laws. The real object of these statutes was to impair the operation of the national Fugitive Slave Law, although their proposed object was in most cases to prevent the removal of free colored citizens to the South under the claim that they were fugitive slaves. These statutes were passed by the legislatures of various states during the period of a little more than thirty years from 1824 to 1858, the greater number being enacted after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854. The first two in the series were those enacted by Indiana and Connecticut in 1824 and 1838 respectively, and provided that on appeal fugitives might have a trial by jury. In 1840 Vermont and New York framed laws granting jury trial, and also providing attorneys to defend fugitives. In 1842 the Prigg decision gave the occasion for a new class of statutes; the release of state authorities from the execution of the Slave Law by the opinion handed down by Justice Story was taken advantage of in Massachusetts, Vermont, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, and the officers of the states were forbidden from performing the duties imposed by the law of 1793. The decade from 1850 to 1860 is marked by a fresh crop of these personal liberty acts, due to the sentiment aroused by the law of 1850 and aggravated by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. As the new national law avoided the employment of state officers, state legislation was now directed in the main to limiting the powers of the executors of the laws as far as possible, and depriving them of the facilities of action. Thus, the new laws generally provided counsel for any one arrested as a fugitive; secured to him a trial surrounded by the usual safeguards; prohibited the use of state jails; and forbade state officers to issue writs or give aid to the claimant. The penalty for the violation of these provisions was a heavy fine and imprisonment. "Such acts," it is said, "were passed in Vermont, Connecticut and Rhode Island, in Massachusetts, Michigan and Maine. Later, laws were also enacted in Wisconsin, Kansas, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Of the other Northern States, two only, New Jersey and California, gave any official sanction to the rendition of fugitives. In New Hampshire, New York, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota, however, no full personal liberty laws were passed."[723]

[723] M. G. McDougall, Fugitive Slaves, pp. 65-70, and the references there given.

Notwithstanding the disposition shown in many parts of the free states to protect fugitive settlers, the Slave Law of 1850 spread consternation and distress among them, and caused numbers to leave the little homes they had established for themselves, and renew their search for liberty. Perhaps in no community of the North did fugitive settlers feel themselves more secure than in Boston, the city of Garrison, Phillips and Parker; here they were gathered together by the Rev. Leonard B. Grimes, a colored man, who soon organized a church of fugitive slaves, and such was the feeling of confidence among them that in 1849 a building was begun for this unique congregation. Within a few months, however, the new Slave Law was enacted, and wrung from this band of runaways a cry of anguish that may be justly regarded as expressing the distress of the people of this class in all quarters of the free states. At a meeting of the Boston refugees, held October 5, 1850, an appeal to the clergy of Massachusetts was issued, in the preamble of which was embodied the slaves' view of their own situation, and their pitiful entreaty for help. As "trembling, proscribed and hunted fugitives ... now scattered through the various towns and villages of Massachusetts, and momentarily liable to be seized by the strong arm of government, and hurried back to stripes, tortures and bondage ..." they implored the clergy to "'lift up (their) voices like a trumpet' against the Fugitive Slave Bill, recently adopted by Congress...."[724] The church building of the fugitive settlers "was arrested midway towards its completion, and the members were scattered in wild dismay. More than forty fled to Canada. One of their number, Shadrach, was seized, but more fortunate than the hapless Sims, who had no fellowship with them, he succeeded in making his escape."[725] An individual case that illustrates the sudden disaster experienced by numerous households throughout the North was recorded by the Rev. J. S. C. Abbott, in January, 1852. The case occurred in Boston in 1851: "A colored girl, eighteen years of age, a few years ago escaped from slavery at the South. Through scenes of adventure and peril she found her way to Boston, obtained employment, secured friends, and became a consistent member of a Methodist church. She became interested in a very worthy young man, of her own complexion, who was a member of the same church. They were soon married. Their home, though humble, was the abode of piety and contentment.... Seven years passed away; they had two little boys, one six and the other four years of age. These children, the sons of a free father, but of a mother who had been a slave, by the laws of our Southern states were doomed to their mother's fate. These Boston boys, born beneath the shadow of Faneuil Hall, the sons of a free citizen of Boston, and educated in the Boston free schools, were, by the compromises of the Constitution, admitted to be slaves, the property of a South Carolinian planter. The Boston father had no right to his own sons. The law, however, had long been considered a dead letter. The Christian mother, as she morning and evening bowed with her children in prayer, felt that they were safe from the slave-hunter, surrounded as they were by the churches, the schools, and the free institutions of Massachusetts.

[724] Scrap-book of clippings, circulars, etc., presented to the Boston Public Library by Mrs. L. L. Parker.

[725] C. E. Stevens, Anthony Burns, A History, 1856, p. 208.

"The Fugitive Slave Law was enacted. It revived the hopes of the slave-owners. A young, healthy, energetic mother, with two fine boys, was a rich prize.... Good men began to say: 'We must enforce this law; it is one of the compromises of the Constitution.' Christian ministers began to preach: 'The voice of the law is the voice of God. There is no higher rule of duty.'... The poor woman was panic-stricken. Her friends gathered around her and trembled for her. Her husband was absent from home, a seaman on board one of our Liverpool packets. She was afraid to get out of doors lest some one from the South should see her and recognize her. One day, as she was going to the grocery for some provisions, her quick and anxious eye caught a glimpse of a man prowling around, whom she immediately recognized as from the vicinity of her old home of slavery. Almost fainting with terror, she hastened home, and, taking her two children by the hand, fled to the house of a friend. She and her trembling children were hid in the garret. In less than one hour after her escape, the officer with a writ came for her arrest.

"... At midnight, her friends took her in a hack, and conveyed her, with her children, to the house of her pastor. A prayer-meeting had been appointed there, at that hour, in behalf of the suffering sister. A small group of stricken hearts were assembled.... Groanings and lamentations filled the room. No one could pray.... Other fugitives were there, trembling in view of a doom more dreadful to them than death. After an hour of weeping ... they took this Christian mother and her children in a hack, and conveyed them to one of the Cunard steamers, which fortunately was to sail for Halifax the next day.... Her brethren and sisters of the church raised a little money from their scanty means to pay her passage, and to save her for a few days from starving, after her first arrival in the cold land of strangers. Her husband soon returned to Boston, to find his home desolate, his wife and his children exiles in a foreign land.

"I think that this narrative may be relied upon as accurate. I received the facts from the lips of one, a member of the church, who was present at that midnight 'weeping-meeting,' before the Lord. Such is slavery in Boston, in the year 1852. Has the North nothing to do with slavery?"[726]

[726] Quoted by F. B. Sanborn, in his Life of Dr. S. G. Howe, the Philanthropist, pp. 237, 238, 239. Similar stories are related by Lydia Maria Child, in her Life of Isaac T. Hopper, pp. 455-458.

In localities nearer to slave territory than Boston, and in places where anti-slavery sentiment was perhaps less pronounced, it may be supposed that terror was not less prevalent among fugitive settlers. The members of the colored community near Sandy Lake in northwestern Pennsylvania, many of whom had purchased small farms and had them partly paid for, sold out or gave away their farms and went to Canada in a body.[727] The sudden disappearance of refugees from their habitations in various other places as soon as the character of the new law became noised abroad was a phenomenon the cause of which was unmistakable. Of the many that thus vanished from their accustomed haunts,[728] Josiah Henson, writing in 1852, said: "Some have found their way to England, but the mass are flying to Canada, where they feel themselves secure. Already several thousands have gone thither, and have added considerably to the number already settled, or partially settled, in that part of the British dominions...."[729] As Mr. Henson was a worker among the refugees in Canada he was in a position to speak from his personal knowledge, and his testimony is sustained by that of the Rev. Anthony Bingey, an escaped slave, who helped receive fugitives at Amherstburg, Ontario, one of the chief landing-places of the negro emigrants from the United States. Mr. Bingey states that after the Fugitive Slave Law took effect the runaways came there "by fifties every day, like frogs in Egypt." Before that time "many had settled in the States, but after the Fugitive Slave Law they could be taken, so they came in from all parts."[730] Sumner estimated that, altogether, "as many as six thousand Christian men and women, meritorious persons,--a larger band than that of the escaping Puritans,--precipitately fled from homes which they had established" to British soil. The Liberator published a statement, made in February, 1851, that the African Methodist and Baptist churches of Buffalo, New York, had both lost a large number of members, the loss of the former being given as one hundred. The Baptist church of the colored people of Rochester, in the same state, out of a membership of one hundred and fourteen, lost one hundred and twelve, including the pastor. The African Baptist church of Detroit lost eighty-four members at this time.[731]

[727] Letter of John F. Hogue, Greenville, Pa., Nov. 25, 1895; letter of the Rev. James Lawson, Franklin, Pa., Nov. 25, 1895.

[728] Life of William Lloyd Garrison, Vol. III, p. 302. See also Rhodes's History of the United States, Vol. I, p. 198.

[729] The Life of Josiah Henson, formerly a Slave, as narrated by Himself, pp. 97, 98, 99.

[730] Conversation with Mr. Bingey, Windsor, Ont., July 31, 1896.

[731] Life of Garrison, Vol. III, p. 302; also foot-note, pp. 302, 303.

One must not imagine, however, that all the fugitives migrated beyond the borders of the free states. No doubt a considerable number, more daring than the rest,[732] or in some way favored by circumstances, chose to remain and run the risk of discovery. Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson asserts that "For many years fugitive slaves came to Massachusetts and remained, this lasting until the Fugitive Slave Law was passed in 1850, and longer. Even after that period we tried to keep them in Worcester, where I then lived, it being a strong anti-slavery place, and they often stayed."[733] Some of the fugitives that were induced to move by the Slave Law only passed from one state into another, instead of continuing their journey to regions beyond the jurisdiction of a United States commissioner. Of a company of blacks dwelling near the home of Elijah F. Pennypacker in Chester County, Pennsylvania, at the time of the enactment of the law of 1850, it is said that while some went to Canada, some went to New York and some to Massachusetts.[734] It was noted above that the new church of the fugitives of Boston was stopped midway in the process of building by the promulgation of the act, but it is significant that the structure was completed soon after. Evidently not all of the refugees departed from the city of their adoption. It is related that "When the first fury of the storm had blown over, Mr. Grimes set himself with redoubled energy to repair the wastes that had been made. He collected money from the charitable, and purchased the members of his church out of slavery, that they might return without fear to the fold. He made friends among the rich, who advanced funds for the completion of his church. At length it was finished, and, as if for an omen of good, was dedicated on the first day when Burns stood for trial before Commissioner Loring."[735] Runaways entering the free states for the first time after the subsidence of the paroxysm of fear among their fellows sometimes remained in neighborhoods where the conditions were supposed to be favorable to their safety. Some of these were never disturbed, and consequently never went to Canada at all.

[732] "Some of the boldest chose to remain, and armed themselves to defend their freedom, instinctively calculating that the sight of such an exigency would make the Northern heart beat too rapidly for prudence!" Weiss, Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker, Vol. II, p. 92.

[733] Letter of Mr. Higginson, Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 5, 1894.

[734] R. C. Smedley, History of the Underground Railroad, p. 210.

[735] C. E. Stevens, Anthony Burns, A History, p. 208. In a foot-note it is said, "The church is a neat and commodious brick structure, two stories in height, and handsomely finished in the interior. It will seat five or six hundred people. The whole cost, including the land, was $13,000, of which, through the exertion of Mr. Grimes, $10,000 have already (1856) been paid...."

Among the fugitive settlers in the Northern states there were some at least that became widely known among abolitionists and others as active agents of the Underground Railroad. Frederick Douglass was one of these, and during his residence in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and later during his residence in Rochester, New York, he was able to help many runaways. The Rev. J. W. Loguen, who became a bishop of the African Methodist Church about 1869, settled in Syracuse, New York, in 1841, and became immediately one of the managers of secret operations there. In his hospitable home, Samuel J. May relates, was fitted up an apartment for fugitive slaves, and, for years before the Emancipation Act, scarcely a week passed without some one, in his flight from slavedom to Canada, enjoyed shelter and repose at Elder Loguen's."[736] Lewis Hayden, for many years a prominent citizen of Boston, who owed his liberty to the self-sacrificing efforts of the Rev. Calvin Fairbank and Miss Delia Webster in September, 1844,[737] made a practice of harboring slaves in his house, number 66 Phillips Street. "Some there are," a recent writer declares, "who well remember when William Craft was in hiding here from the slave-catchers, and how Lewis Hayden had placed two kegs of gunpowder on the premises, resolved to blow up his house rather than surrender the fugitive. The heroic frenzy of the resolute black face, as with match in hand Hayden stood waiting the man-stealers, those who saw it declare that they can never forget."[738]

[736] Some Recollections of our Anti-Slavery Conflict, pp. 202, 203.

[737] Rev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times, pp. 46, 48, 49.

[738] Article by A. H. Grimké, on "Anti-Slavery Boston," in _The New England Magazine_, December, 1890, p. 458.

William Wells Brown, who distinguished himself as an anti-slavery lecturer in this country and England, rendered considerable service to fellow-fugitives shortly after his escape from Missouri about 1840.[739] Securing employment on a Lake Erie steamboat, he was able to provide the means of transportation for many runaways across the lake. As the boat frequently touched at Cleveland on its trips to and fro between Buffalo and Detroit, Mr. Brown made an arrangement with some Cleveland friends to furnish transportation, which was done without charge, for any negroes they might wish to send to Canada. The result was that delegations of anxious refugees were often taken aboard at the Cleveland wharf. Brown engaged in this service in the early forties, and his companies were therefore small, but he sometimes gave passage to four or five at one time. "In the year 1842," he says, "I conveyed, from the first of May to the first of December, sixty-nine fugitives over Lake Erie to Canada. In 1843 I visited Malden, in upper Canada, and counted seventeen in that small village whom I had assisted in reaching Canada."[740] John W. Jones, a respected citizen of Elmira, New York, made his way in 1844 from Virginia to the city where he still lives. During the following year he succeeded in aiding two younger brothers to join him, and thereafter he continued, in coöperation with Mr. Jervis Langdon and other abolitionists of Elmira, to succor his brethren in their search for places of refuge. After the construction of the Northern Central Railroad through Elmira, Mr. Jones effected an arrangement with some of the employees of that road by which his friends could be carried through to the Canadian border in baggage-cars. At the same time he was in regular correspondence with William Still, the agent of the central underground station at Philadelphia, who frequently sent him companies of passengers requiring immediate transportation.[741] John H. Hooper, a fugitive from the Eastern Shore of Maryland and an acquaintance there of Fred Douglass, kept a station at Troy, New York, where he settled.[742] Louis Washington, who fled from Richmond, Virginia, to Columbus, Ohio, became a conductor of the Underground Road at that point. Mr. James Poindexter, a well-known colored clergyman of Columbus, knew Washington intimately, and testifies that he had teams and wagons with which he conveyed the midnight pilgrims on their way.[743] There are other cases of fugitive settlers that became members of the large company of underground operators. But a sufficient number have been mentioned to indicate that they were not rare. The first and the last of the seven named did not continue long in the status of escaped slaves. Frederick Douglass secured his liberty in a legal way through the payment by English friends of the sum of $750 to his master. Louis Washington purchased his own freedom. The other five, so far as known, were never relieved by the payment of money from the claims of their masters. Most, if not all, of these men remained in the Northern states after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

[739] S. J. May, _Some Recollections of our Anti-Slavery Conflict_, p. 289.

[740] Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave, pp. 106, 107, 108.

[741] Letters of Mrs. Susan Crane, Elmira, N.Y.; letters of John W. Jones, Elmira, N.Y.; see also Still, _Underground Railroad Records_, p. 530.

[742] Letters of Mr. Martin I. Townsend, Troy. N.Y., Sept. 4, 1896, and April 3, 1897.

[743] Conversation with Mr. Poindexter, Columbus, O., in the summer of 1895.

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IX. PROSECUTIONS OF UNDERGROUND RAILROAD MEN

The aversion to a law for the rendition of fugitive slaves that early manifested itself in the North was perhaps foreshadowed in the hesitating manner in which the question was dealt with by Congress. The original demand for legislation was caused by the activity of kidnappers in Pennsylvania; but the first bill, reported from committee to the House in November, 1791, was dropped for some reason not now discoverable. At the end of March in the following year a committee of the Senate was appointed to consider the matter, but it accomplished nothing. At the beginning of the next session a second Senate committee was chosen, and from this body a bill emanated. This bill proved to be unsatisfactory, however, and after the committee had been remodelled by the addition of two new members the bill was recommitted with instructions to amend. With some slight change the measure proposed by the committee was adopted by the Senate, January 18; and after an interval of nearly three weeks the House passed it with little or no debate, by a vote of forty-eight to seven. Thus for nearly a year and a quarter the subject was under the consideration of Congress before it could be embodied in a bill and sent to the executive for his signature. On February 12, 1793, President Washington signed this bill and it became a law.[744]

[744] M. G. McDougall, Fugitive Slaves, pp. 17, 18.

The object of the law was, of course, to enforce the constitutional guarantee in regard to the delivery of fugitives from service to their masters. An analysis of the law will show that forcible seizure of the alleged fugitive was authorized; that the decision of the magistrate before whom he was to be taken was allowed to turn on the testimony of the master, or the affidavit of some magistrate in the state from which he came; and that trial by jury was denied. Persons attempting to obstruct the law by harboring or concealing a fugitive slave, resisting his arrest, or securing his rescue, were liable to a fine of five hundred dollars for the benefit of the claimant, and the right of action on account of these injuries was reserved to the claimant.[745]

[745] Statutes at Large, I, 302-305.

The exclusive regard for the rights of the owner exhibited in these provisions was fitted to stir the popular sense of justice in the Northern states, most of which had already ranged themselves by individual action on the side of liberty. Persons moved by the appeals of the hunted negro to transgress the statute would naturally try to avoid its penalties by concealment of their acts, and this we know was what they did. The whole movement denominated the Underground Railroad was carried on in secret, because only thus could the fugitives, in whose behalf it originated, and their abettors, by whom it was maintained, be secure from the law. When through mischance or open resistance, as sometimes happened, an offender against the law was discovered and brought to trial, the case was not allowed to progress far before the Fugitive Recovery Act itself was assailed vigorously by the counsel for the defendant. The grounds of attack included the absence of provision for jury trial, the authority of the claimant or his agent to arrest without a warrant, the antagonism between state and federal legislation, the supposed repugnancy of the law of 1793 to the Ordinance of 1787, the denial of the power of Congress to legislate on the subject of fugitive slaves, and the question as to the responsibility for the execution of the law. Nearly if not all of these disputed points were involved in the great question as to the constitutionality of the congressional act, a question that kept working up through the successive decisions of the courts to irritate and disturb the peace between the sections, that the fugitive clause in the federal Constitution, the act of 1793 itself, and the judicial affirmations following in their train were intended to promote.

The omission of a provision from the law of Congress securing trial by jury to the alleged fugitive was at once remarked by the friends of the bondman, and caused the law to be denounced in the court-room as worthy only of the severest condemnation.[746] As early as 1819, in the case of Wright vs. Deacon, tried before the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, it was urged that the supposed fugitive was entitled to a jury trial, but the arguments made in support of the claim have not been preserved.[747] The question was presented in several subsequent cases of importance arising under the law of 1793, namely, Jack vs. Martin, in 1835,[748] Peter, alias Lewis Martin, about 1837,[749] and State vs. Hoppess, in 1845.[750] From the reports of these cases one is not able to gather much in the way of direct statement showing what were the grounds taken for the advocacy of trial by jury in such cases, but the indications that appear are not to be mistaken. In all of these cases it seems to have been insisted that the law of 1793 failed to conform to the constitutional requirement on this point; and in State vs. Hoppess it is distinctly stated that the law provided for a trial of the most important right without a jury, contrary to the amendment of the Constitution declaring that "In suits at common law, where the value shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved...";[751] and that the act also authorized the deprivation of a person of his or her liberty contrary to another amendment, which declares that no person shall be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."[752] In Jack vs. Martin, as probably in the other cases, the obvious objection seems to have been made that the denial of the jury contributed to make easy the enslavement of free citizens. The courts, however, did not sustain these objections; thus, for example, in the last case named, Judge Nelson, while admitting the defect of the law, decided in conformity with it,[753] and the claims upon the constitutional guarantees, asserted in behalf of the supposed fugitive, were also overruled, a reason given in the case of Wright vs. Deacon being that the evident scope and tenor of both the Constitution and the act of Congress favored the delivery of the fugitive on a summary proceeding without the delay of a formal trial in a court of common law. Another reason offered by the court in this case, and repeated by the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York in the matter of Peter, alias Lewis Martin, was that the examination under the federal slave law was only preliminary, its purpose being merely to determine the claimant's right to carry the fugitive back to the state whence he had fled, where the question of slavery would properly be open to inquiry.

[746] Professor Eugene Wambaugh, of the Law School of Harvard University, in a letter to the author, comments as follows on the source of the injustice wrought by the Fugitive Slave acts: "The difficulty lay in the initial assumption that a human being can be property. Grant this assumption, and there follow many absurdities, among them the impossibility of framing a Fugitive Slave Law that shall be both logical and humane. Human beings are entitled to a trial of the normal sort, especially in a case involving the liability of personal restraint. Chattels, however, are entitled to no trial at all; and if a chattel be lost or stolen, the owner may retake it wherever he finds it, provided he commits no breach of the peace. (3 Blackstone's Commentaries, 4.) If slaves had been treated as ordinary chattels, there could have been no trial as to the ownership of them, unless, indeed, there were a dispute between competing claimants. There would have been, however, the fatal objection that thus a free man--black, mulatto, or white--might be enslaved without a hearing. Here, then, is a puzzle. If the man is a slave, he is entitled to no trial at all. If he is free, he is entitled to a trial of the most careful sort, surrounded with all the safeguards that have been thrown up by the law. When there is such a dilemma, is it strange that there should be a compromise? The Fugitive Slave Laws really were a compromise; for in so far as they provided for an abnormal and incomplete trial, a hearing before a United States Commissioner, simply to determine rights as between the supposed slave and the supposed master, they conceded the radical impossibility of following out logically the supposition that human beings can be chattels, and, in so far as they denied to the supposed slave the normal trial, they assumed in advance that he was a slave. I need not write of the dilemma further. A procedure intermediate between a formal trial and a total denial of justice was probably the only solution practicable in those days; but it was an illogical solution, and the only logical solution was emancipation."

[747] 5 Sergeant and Rawle's Reports, 63. See Appendix B, p. 368.

[748] 14 Wendell's Reports, 514. See Appendix B, p. 368.

[749] In the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. 2 Paine's Reports, 352.

[750] 2 Western Law Journal, 282.

[751] Amendments, Article VII.

[752] Ibid., Article V.

[753] 12 Wendell's Reports, 315-324.

The mode of arrest permitted by the law was a cause of irritation to the minds of abolitionists throughout the free states, and became one of the points concerning which they joined issue in the courts. The law empowered the claimant to seize the fugitive wheresoever found for the purpose of taking him before an officer to prove property. The circumstances that quickened the sympathy of a community into active resistance to this feature of the law are fully illustrated in one of the earliest cases coming before a high court, in which the question of seizure was brought up for determination. The case is that of Commonwealth vs. Griffith, which was tried in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, at the October term in 1823. From the record of the matter appearing in the law-books, one gathers that a slave, Randolph, who had fled from his master in Virginia, found a refuge in New Bedford about 1818, where by his thrift he acquired a dwelling-house. After several years he was discovered by Griffith, his owner's agent, and was seized without a warrant or other legal process, although the agent had taken the precaution to have a deputy sheriff present. The agent's intention was to take the slave before a magistrate for examination, pursuant to the act of 1793.[754] New Bedford was a Quaker town, and the slave seems not to have lacked friends, for the agent was at once indicted for assault and battery and false imprisonment. The action thus begun was prosecuted in the name of the state, under the direction of Mr. Norton, the attorney-general. As against the act of Congress the prosecution urged that the Constitution did not authorize a seizure without some legal process, and that such a seizure would manifestly be contrary to the article of the amendments of the Constitution that asserted the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.[755] The protest that if the law was constitutional any citizen's house might be invaded without a warrant under pretence that a negro was concealed there called forth the interesting remark from Chief Justice Parker that a case arising out of a constable's entering a citizen's house without warrant in search of a slave had come before him in Middlesex, and that he had held the act to be a trespass. Nevertheless, the court sustained the law on the ground that slaves were not parties to the Constitution, and that the amendment referred to had relation only to the parties.[756]

[754] 2 Pickering's Reports, 12. See Appendix B, p. 368.

[755] Amendments, Article IV; 2 Pickering's Reports, 15, 16.

[756] 2 Pickering's Reports, 19.

The question of arrest without warrant emerged later in several other cases; for example, Johnson vs. Tompkins (1833),[757] the matter of Peter, alias Lewis Martin (1837),[758] Prigg vs. Pennsylvania (1842),[759] and State vs. Hoppess (1845).[760] The line of objection followed by those opposing the law in this series will be sufficiently indicated by the arguments presented in the Massachusetts case of 1823, treated above. The tribunals before which the later suits were brought did not depart from the precedent set in the early case, and the act of 1793 was invariably justified. In Johnson vs. Tompkins the court pointed out that under the law the claimant was not only free to arrest his fugitive without a warrant, but that he was also free to do this unaccompanied by any civil officer, although, as was suggested, it was the part of prudence to have such an officer to keep the peace.[761] In the famous case of Prigg vs. Pennsylvania, the Supreme Court of the United States went back of the law of Congress to the Constitution in seeking the source of the master's right of recaption, and laid down the principle that "under and in virtue of the Constitution, the owner of a slave is clothed with entire authority, in every state in the Union, to seize and recapture his slave, whenever he can do it without any breach of the peace, or any illegal violence. In this sense and to this extent this clause of the Constitution may properly be said to execute itself, and to require no aid from legislation, state or national."[762]

[757] In the Circuit Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 1 Baldwin's Circuit Court Reports, p. 571 et seq. See Appendix B, p. 368.

[758] 2 Paine's Reports, 350. See Appendix B, p. 369.

[759] 16 Peters' Reports, 613.

[760] 2 Western Law Journal, 282. See Appendix B, p. 371.

[761] 1 Baldwin's Circuit Court Reports, 571; Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, Vol. II, p. 444.

[762] 16 Peters' Reports, 613.

For many years before Prigg's case various states in the North had considered it to be within the province of their legislative powers to enact laws dealing with the subject of fugitive slaves. It would be beside our purpose to enter here upon an examination of these statutes, but it is proper to say that the variety of particulars in which these differed from the law concerning the same subject enacted by Congress prepared the way for a series of legal contests in regard to the question, whether the power to legislate in relation to fugitive slaves could be exercised properly by the states as well as by the federal government. This issue presented itself in at least three notable cases under the law of 1793: these were Jack vs. Martin (1835), Peter, alias Lewis Martin (1837), and Prigg vs. Pennsylvania (1842). The decisions reached in the first and last cases are of especial significance, because, in the first, the question of concurrent jurisdiction constituted the subject of main interest for the Supreme Court of New York, the court to which the case had been taken from an inferior tribunal; while in the last case, the importance attaches to the conclusive character of an adjudication pronounced by the most exalted court of the nation.

In Jack vs. Martin the action was begun under the New York law of 1828 for the recovery of a fugitive from New Orleans. Notwithstanding the fact that this law authorized the seizure and return of fugitives to their owners, and that in the case before us, as occurred also in the case of Peter, alias Lewis Martin, the negro was adjudged to his claimant, the law of the state was considered invalid, because the right of legislation on the subject was held to belong exclusively to the national government.[763]

[763] 12 Wendell's Reports, 311, 316-318.

In Prigg's case[764] a statute of Pennsylvania, passed in 1826, and bearing the suggestive title, "An act to give effect to the provisions of the Constitution of the United States relative to fugitives from labor, for the protection of free people of color, and to prevent kidnapping," was violated by Edward Prigg in seizing and removing a fugitive slave-woman and her children from York County, Pennsylvania, into Maryland, where their mistress lived. In the argument made before the Supreme Court in support of the state law, the authority of the state to legislate was urged on the ground that such authority was not prohibited to the states nor expressly granted "in terms" to Congress;[765] that the statute of Pennsylvania had been enacted at the instance of Maryland, and with a view to giving effect to the constitutional provision relative to fugitives;[766] that the states could best determine how the duty of delivery enjoined upon them should be performed so as to be made acceptable to their citizens;[767] and that the act of Congress was silent as to the rights of negroes wrongfully seized and of the states whose territory was entered and laws violated by persons acting under pretext of right.[768] The Supreme Court did not sustain these objections. A majority of the judges agreed with Justice Story in the view that Congress alone had the power to legislate on the subject of fugitive slaves. The reasons given for this view were two: first, the constitutional source of the authority, by virtue of which the force of an act of Congress pervades the whole Union uncontrolled by state sovereignty or state laws, and secures rights that otherwise would rest upon interstate comity and favor; and, secondly, the necessity of having a uniform system of regulations for all parts of the United States, by which the differences arising from the varieties of policy, local convenience and local feelings existing in the various states can be avoided. The right to retake fugitive slaves and the correlative duty to deliver them were to be "coextensive and uniform in remedy and operation throughout the whole Union." While maintaining that the right of legislation in this matter was exclusively vested in Congress, the court insisted that it did not thereby interfere with the police power of the several states, and that by virtue of this power the states had the authority to arrest and imprison runaway slaves, and to expel them from their borders, just as they might do with vagrants, provided that in exercising this jurisdiction the rights of owners to reclaim their slaves secured by the Constitution and the legislation of Congress were not impeded or destroyed.[769]

[764] See Appendix B, p. 370.

[765] 16 Peters' Reports, 579.

[766] Ibid., 588-590.

[767] Ibid., 595.

[768] Ibid., 602.

[769] Ibid., 612-617.

As the friends of runaway slaves sometimes sought to oppose to the summary procedure of the federal law the processes provided by state laws in behalf of fugitives, so in their endeavor to overthrow the act of 1793, they occasionally appealed to the Ordinance for the government of the Northwest Territory. The Ordinance, it will be remembered, contained a clause prohibiting slavery throughout the region northwest of the Ohio River, and another authorizing the surrender of slaves escaping into this territory.[770] The abolitionists took advantage of these provisions under certain circumstances, in the hope of securing the release of those that had fallen into the eager grasp of the congressional act, and at the same time of proving the incompatibility of this measure with the Ordinance. The attempt to do these things was made in three well-known cases, which came before the courts about 1845. The first of these was State vs. Hoppess, tried before the Supreme Court of Ohio on the circuit, to secure the liberation of a slave that had fled from his keeper, but was afterwards recaptured;[771] the second was Vaughan vs. Williams, adjudicated in the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Indiana, a case originating in an action against the defendant for rescuing certain fugitives;[772] and the third was Jones vs. Van Zandt, which was carried to the Supreme Court of the United States and there decided. This last case grew out of the aid given nine runaways by Mr. Van Zandt, through which one of them succeeded in escaping.[773] The arguments, based upon the Ordinance, that were advanced in these cases are adequately set forth in the report of the first case, a report prepared by Salmon P. Chase, subsequently Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. These arguments, two in number, were as follows: first, the Ordinance expressly prohibited slavery, and thereby effected the immediate emancipation of all slaves in the Territory; and, secondly, the clause in the Ordinance providing for the surrender of fugitives applied only to persons held to service in the original states.[774]

[770] See Chap. II, pp. 28, 32.

[771] 2 Western Law Journal, 279-293.

[772] 3 Western Law Journal, 65-71; also, 3 McLean's Reports, 530-538.

[773] 5 Howard's Reports, 215 et seq.

[774] 2 Western Law Journal, 281, 283; 3 McLean, 530.

The opinions given by the courts in the cases under consideration failed to support the idea of the irreconcilability existing between the law of 1793 and the Ordinance. The Supreme Court of Ohio declared that under the federal Constitution the right of recaption of fugitive slaves was secured to the new states to the same extent that it belonged to the original states.[775] The Circuit Court of the United States took virtually the same stand by pointing out that a state carved from the Northwest Territory assumed the same constitutional obligations by entering the Union that the original thirteen states had earlier assumed, and that where a conflict occurred the Constitution was paramount to the Ordinance.[776] Finally, the Supreme Court at Washington declared that the clause in the Ordinance prohibiting slavery applied only to people living within the borders of the Northwest Territory, and that it did not impair the rights of those living in states outside of this domain. Wheresoever the Ordinance existed the states preserved their own laws, as well as the Ordinance, by forbidding slavery; the provision of the Constitution and the act of Congress looking toward the delivery of fugitive slaves did not interfere with the laws of the free states as to their own subjects. The court therefore held that there was no repugnance between the act and the Ordinance.[777]

[775] 2 Western Law Journal, 288.

[776] 3 McLean's Reports, 532; 3 Western Law Journal, 65.

[777] 5 Howard's Reports, 230, 231.

Among the various objections raised in the court-room against the law of 1793, the denial of the power of Congress to legislate on the subject of fugitive slaves was one that should not be overlooked. It commanded the attention of the bench in at least two important cases, both of which have been mentioned in other connections, namely, Peter, alias Lewis Martin (1837), and State vs. Hoppess (1845). In both of these cases the denial of legislative authority was based upon the doctrine that there had been no delegation of the necessary power to Congress by the Constitution. The fugitive slave clause in the Constitution, it was said in the report of the second case, prepared by Mr. Chase, granted no power at all to Congress, but was "a mere clause of compact imposing a duty on the states to be fulfilled, if at all, by state legislation."[778] However prevalent this view may have been in the Northern states,--and the number of state laws dealing with the subject of fugitive slaves indicates that it predominated,--neither the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York in the earlier case, nor the Supreme Court of Ohio in the later, were willing to subscribe to the doctrine. On the contrary, both asserted the power of Congress to pass laws for the restoration of runaway slaves, on the ground that the creation of a duty or a right by the Constitution is the warrant under which Congress necessarily acts in making the laws needful to enforce the duty or secure the right.[779]

[778] 2 Paine's Reports, 354; 2 Western Law Journal, 282.

[779] 2 Paine's Reports, 354, 355; also, 2 _Western Law Journal_, 289.

The outcome of the judicial examination in the high courts of the various points thus far considered was wholly favorable to the constitutionality of the law of 1793. The one case within the category of great cases in which that law was decided to be unconstitutional in any particular was that of Prigg vs. Pennsylvania. By the law of 1793 state and local authorities were empowered to take cognizance of fugitive slave cases together with judges holding their appointments from the federal government.[780] In the hearing given the case before the Supreme Court at Washington, in 1842, Mr. Johnson, the attorney-general of Pennsylvania, cited former decisions of the Supreme Court to show that in so far as the congressional law vested jurisdiction in state officers it was unconstitutional and void.[781] The court's answer was momentous and far-reaching. While the law was declared to be constitutional in its essential features, it was asserted that it did not point out any state functionaries, or any state actions, to carry its provisions into effect. The states could not, therefore, so the court decided, be compelled to enforce them; and any insistence that the states were bound to provide means for the performance of the duties of the national government, nowhere delegated or entrusted to them by the Constitution, would bear the appearance of an unconstitutional exercise of the interpretative power.[782] As the decision in the Prigg case carried the weight of great authority, and became a precedent for all future judgments,[783] the relief it afforded state officers from distasteful functions was soon accepted by many states, and they enacted laws forbidding their magistrates to issue warrants for the arrest or removal of fugitive slaves.[784] In consequence of this manifest disinclination on the part of the Northern states to restore to Southern masters their escaped slaves, the federal government was induced to make more effective provision for the execution of the Constitution in this particular. Such provision was embodied in the second Fugitive Slave Law, passed as a part of the Compromise of 1850.

[780] See Section 3 of the act, Statutes at Large, I, 302-305.

[781] 16 Peters' Reports, 598.

[782] 16 Peters' Reports, 608, 622. See also Marion G. McDougall's Fugitive Slaves, pp. 108, 109.

[783] M. G. McDougall's Fugitive Slaves, p. 28.

[784] See Chap. IX, pp. 245, 246, and Chap. X, p. 337.

That the new law was not intended to extinguish the old is apparent from the title assigned it, which read: "An Act to amend, and supplementary to, the Act entitled 'An Act respecting Fugitives from Justice, and Persons escaping from the service of their Masters, ..."[785] Its evident purpose was to increase the facilities and improve the means for the recovery of fugitives from labor. To this end it created commissioners, who were to have authority, like the judges of the circuit and district courts of the United States, to issue warrants for the apprehension of runaway slaves, and to grant certificates for the removal of such persons back to the state or territory whence they had escaped. All cases were to be heard in a summary manner; the testimony of the alleged fugitive could not be received in evidence; and the fee of the commissioner or judge was to be ten dollars when the decision was in favor of the claimant, but only five dollars when it was unfavorable. The penalties created by the new law were more rigorous than those imposed by the old. A fine not to exceed a thousand dollars and imprisonment not to exceed six months constituted the punishment for harboring a runaway or aiding in his rescue, and the party injured could bring suit for civil damages against the offender in the sum of one thousand dollars for each fugitive lost through his interference. If the claimant apprehended a rescue, the officer making the arrest could be required to retain the fugitive in his custody for the purpose of removing him to the state whence he had fled. The refusal of the officer to obey and execute the warrants and precepts issued under the provisions of the law laid him liable to a fine of a thousand dollars for the benefit of the claimant; and the escape of a fugitive from his custody, whether with his assent or without it, made him liable to a prosecution for the full value of the labor of the negro thus lost. Ample security from such disaster was intended to be provided for the marshal and his deputies by the clause authorizing them to summon to their aid the bystanders, or posse comitatus, when necessary, and all good citizens were commanded to respond promptly with their assistance. In removing a fugitive back to the state from which he had escaped, when an attempt at rescue was feared, the marshal in charge was commanded to employ as many persons as he deemed necessary to resist the interference. The omission of the new law to mention any officers appointed by the states is doubtless traceable, as is the clause establishing commissionerships, to the ruling in the decision of Prigg's case that state officers could not be forced to execute federal legislation.

[785] Statutes at Large, IX, 462.

It will be remembered that the decision in the Prigg case also contained a ruling that acknowledged the right of the claimant to seize and remove the alleged fugitive, wheresoever found, without judicial process. It has been suggested recently that this part of the decision, denominated the most obnoxious part, was avoided in the law of 1850.[786] But the language of the new law no more denied this right than the language of the old bestowed it. In both cases equally the claimant seems to have enjoyed the right of private seizure and arrest without process, but for the purpose of taking the supposed fugitive before the proper official.[787] So far as the language of the statute was concerned the Prigg decision was quite as possible under the later as under the earlier law. It was the language of the Constitution upon which this part of the famous decision was made to rest, and that, it needs scarcely be said, continued unchanged during the period with which we are concerned.

[786] Henry W. Rogers, Editor, _Constitutional History of the United States as seen in the Development of American Law_, Lecture III, by George W. Biddle, p. 152.

[787] Section 3 of the law of 1793 provided that "the person to whom such labour or service may be due, his agent or attorney, is hereby empowered to seize and arrest such fugitive from labour, and to take him or her before any judge of the circuit or district courts of the United States, ... within the state, or before any magistrate of a county (etc.) ... wherein such seizure ... shall be made, and upon proof to the satisfaction of such judge or magistrate ... it shall be the duty of such judge or magistrate to give a certificate thereof ... which shall be a sufficient warrant for removing the said fugitive ... to the state or territory from which he or she fled."

Section 6 of the act of 1850 provides that "the person or persons to whom such service or labour may be due, or his, her, or their agent or attorney ... may pursue and reclaim such fugitive person, either by procuring a warrant ... or by seizing and arresting such fugitive, where the same can be done without process, and by taking, or causing such person to be taken, forthwith before such court, judge or commissioner, whose duty it shall be to hear and determine the case ... in a summary manner; and upon satisfactory proof ... to make out and deliver to such claimant, his or her agent or attorney, a certificate ... with authority ... to use such reasonable force ... as may be necessary ... to take and remove such fugitive person back to the State or Territory whence he or she may have escaped as aforesaid."

It is not to be supposed, of course, that the law of 1850 was found to be intrinsically less objectionable to abolitionists than the measure it was intended to supplement. On the contrary, it soon proved to be decidedly more objectionable. The features of the first Slave Act that were obnoxious to the Northern people, and had been subjected to examination in the courts, were retained in the second act, where they were associated with a number of new features of such a character that they soon brought the new law into the greatest contempt. While, therefore, the records of the trials of the chief cases arising under the later law are found to contain arguments borrowed from the contentions made in the cases already discussed, it is interesting to note that they afford proof that new arguments were also brought to bear against the act of 1850. As with the first Fugitive Slave Law, so also with its successor, fault was found on account of the absence of any provision for jury trial;[788] the authority of a claimant or his agent to arrest without legal process;[789] the opposition alleged to exist between the law and the Ordinance of 1787;[790] and the power said to be improperly exercised by Congress in legislating upon the subject of fugitive slaves.[791] It is unnecessary to introduce here a study of these points as they presented themselves in the various cases arising, for a discussion of them would lead to no principles of importance other than those discovered in the cases already examined.[792]

[788] Sims' case, tried before the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, March term, 1851. See 7 Cushing's Reports, 310.

Miller vs. McQuerry, tried before the Circuit Court of the United States, in Ohio, 1853. See 5 McLean's Reports, 481-484.

Ex parte Simeon Bushnell, etc., tried before the Supreme Court of Ohio, May, 1859. See 9 Ohio State Reports, 170.

[789] Norris vs. Newton et al., tried before the Circuit Court of the United States, in Indiana, May term, 1850. See 5 McLean's Reports, 98.

Ex parte Simeon Bushnell, etc. See 9 Ohio State Reports, 174.

United States vs. Buck, tried before the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, 1860. See 8 American Law Register, 543.

[790] Booth's case, tried before the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, June term, 1854. See 3 Wisconsin Reports, 3.

Ex parte Simeon Bushnell, and ex parte Charles Langston, tried before the Supreme Court of Ohio, May, 1859. See 9 Ohio State Reports, 111, 114-117, 124, 186.

[791] Sims' case. See 7 Cushing's Reports, 290. Booth's case. See 3 Wisconsin Reports.

[792] For the text of the Slave Laws, see Appendix A, pp. 359-366.

In some of the cases that were tried under the act of 1850, however, new questions appeared; and in some, where the questions were perhaps without novelty, the circumstances were such that the cases cannot well be passed over in silence.

If, as was freely declared by the abolitionists, it was possible for free negroes to be abducted from the Northern states under the form of procedure laid down by the act of 1793, there can be little reason to doubt that the same thing was equally possible under the procedure established by the act of 1850. Certain it is that the anti-slavery people were not dubious on this point, but they had scarcely had time to formulate their criticisms of the new law when the first case under it of which there is any record demonstrated the ease with which this legislation could be taken advantage of in the commission of a foul injustice. The case occurred September 26, only eight days after the passage of the act. A free negro, James Hamlet, then living in New York, was arrested as the slave of Mary Brown, of Baltimore. The hearing took place before a United States commissioner and the negro's removal followed at once. The community in which Hamlet was living was greatly incensed when the facts concerning his disappearance became known, and the sum of money necessary for his redemption was quickly contributed. Before a fortnight had elapsed he was brought back from slavery.[793]

[793] Marion G. McDougall, Fugitive Slaves, pp. 43 and 44, with the references there given; Wilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, Vol. II, pp. 304, 305. See Appendix B, p. 372.

The summary manner in which this case was disposed of had prevented a defence being made in behalf of the supposed fugitive. In the next case, however, that of Thomas Sims, which was tried before the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in 1851, the negro was represented by competent counsel, who brought forward objections against the second Fugitive Slave Law. Almost the first of these was directed against the power of the special officers, the commissioners, created by the new law. It was insisted that the authority with which these officers were invested was distinctly judicial in character, despite the constitutional provision limiting the exercise of the judicial power of the United States to organized courts of justice, composed of judges, holding their offices during good behavior, and receiving fixed salaries for their services.[794] The same argument seems to have been adduced in Scott's case, tried before the District Court of the United States in Massachusetts in 1851; in the case of Miller vs. McQuerry, tried before the Circuit Court of the United States in Ohio in 1853;[795] in Booth's case, argued in the Supreme Court of Wisconsin in 1854;[796] in the case known as ex parte Robinson, adjudicated by the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of Ohio at its April term, 1855;[797] and in the case ex parte Simeon Bushnell, argued and determined in the Supreme Court of Ohio in 1859.[798] The court met this argument by a direct answer in four of the cases mentioned, namely, those of Sims, Scott, Booth and ex parte Robinson. In the first, Sims' case, Chief Justice Shaw pointed out that under the Slave Law of 1793 the jurisdiction over fugitive slave cases had been conferred on justices of the peace and magistrates of cities and towns corporate, as well as on judges of the United States circuit and district courts, and that evidently, therefore, the power bestowed had not been deemed judicial in the sense in which it was urged that the functions of the commissioners were judicial. At the same time the judge admitted that the "argument from the limitation of judicial power would be entitled to very grave consideration" if it were without the support of early construction, judicial precedent and the acquiescence of the general and state governments. In the trial of James Scott, on the charge of aiding in the rescue of Shadrach (May or June, 1851), Judge Sprague, of the United States District Court, held that the legal force of the certificate issued by a commissioner lay merely in the authority it conveyed to remove the person designated from one state to another, and that the disposition made of the person removed depended solely upon the laws of the state to which he was taken. The facts set down in the certificate were not, therefore, to be considered as matters judicially established, but as facts only in the opinion of the commissioner. In Booth's case, the opinion of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin contained a reference to the legality of the power of the commissioners and sustained the objection to their authority on the ground of unconstitutionality.[799] In ex parte Robinson, Judge McLean admitted that the inquiry made by the commissioner was "somewhat in the nature of judicial power," but that the same remark applied to all the officers of the accounting departments of the government, as, for example, the examiners in the Patent Office. He also remarked that the Supreme Court had always treated the acts of the commissioners, in the cases that had come before it, as possessed of authority under the law.[800]

[794] 7 Cushing's Reports, 287. The constitutional requirement will be found in Article III, Section 1, of the Constitution of the United States.

[795] 5 McLean's Reports, 481.

[796] 3 Wisconsin Reports, 39.

[797] 6 McLean's Reports, 359.

[798] 9 Ohio State Reports, 176.

[799] 3 Wisconsin Reports, 64.

[800] 6 McLean's Reports, 359, 360.

The uncertainty as to the precise character of the commissioners' power displayed in the different views of the courts before which the question was brought marks the observations of the commissioners themselves in regard to their authority. Examples will be found in Sims' and Burns' cases. In the former, Mr. George T. Curtis declared that claims for fugitive slaves came within the judicial power of the federal government, and that, consequently, the mode and means of the application of this power to the cases arising were properly to be determined by Congress. In the latter, Mr. Edward G. Loring asserted that his action was not judicial at all, but only ministerial.

An additional ground of objection to the commissioners was found in the provision made in the law of 1850 for their remuneration. When one of these officers issued a certificate authorizing the removal of a runaway to the state whence he had escaped, he was legally entitled to a fee of ten dollars; when, however, he withheld the warrant he could receive but five dollars. Abolitionists took much offence at this arrangement, and sometimes scornfully denominated the special appointees under the law the "ten-dollar commissioners," and insisted that the difference between the fees was in the nature of a bribe held out to the officers to induce them to decide in favor of the claimant. Considering the prevalence of this feeling outside of the courts, it is not surprising that objections to the section of the act regulating the fees of commissioners should have been taken within the court-room.[801] Such objection was raised in McQuerry's case, and was answered by Judge McLean. This answer is probably the only one judicially declared, and is worth quoting: "In regard to the five dollars, in addition, paid to the commissioner, where the fugitive is remanded to the claimant," the judge explained, "in all fairness it cannot be considered as a bribe, or as so intended by Congress; but as a compensation to the commissioner for making a statement of the case, which includes the facts proved, and to which the certificate is annexed. In cases where the witnesses are numerous and the investigation takes up several days, five dollars would scarcely be a compensation for the statement required. Where the fugitive is discharged, no statement is necessary."[802]

[801] Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, Vol. II, p. 747.

[802] 5 McLean's Reports, 481.

The fees paid to commissioners were, as indicated in the remarks just quoted, by way of remuneration for services rendered in inquiries relative to the rights of ownership of negroes alleged to have escaped from the South. These inquiries, together with similar inquiries that arose under the act of 1793, constitute a group by themselves. Another group is made up of the cases growing out of the prosecution under the two acts of persons charged with harboring fugitive slaves, or aiding in their rescue. The secrecy observed by abolitionists in giving assistance to escaping bondmen shows that the evils threatening, if a discovery occurred, were constantly kept in mind. After the passage of the second act, public denunciation of the measure was indulged in freely, and open resistance to its provisions, whether these should be considered constitutional or not, was recommended in some quarters. Such remonstrances seem to have early disturbed the judicial repose of the courts, for, six months after the new Fugitive Slave Bill had become a law, Justice Nelson found occasion in the course of a charge to the grand jury of the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York to deliver a speech on sectional issues in which he gave an exposition of the new law, "so that those, if any there be, who have made up their minds to disobey it, may be fully apprised of the consequences."[803] The severer penalties of the law of 1850 had no deterrent effect upon those who were determined to resist its enforcement. The fervor displayed in harboring runaways increased rather than diminished throughout the free states, and the spirit of resistance thus fostered broke out in daring and sometimes successful attempts at rescue. Through the activity of slave-owners in seeking the recovery of their lost property, and the support afforded them by the government in the strict enforcement of the new law, a number of offenders were brought to trial and subjected to punishments inflicted under its provisions.

[803] 1 Blatchford's Circuit Court Reports, 636.

Among the prosecutions arising under the two congressional acts the following cases are offered as typical. The number has been limited by choosing in general from among such as came before supreme courts of the states, or before circuit and district courts of the United States.

One of the earliest cases of which we have record was brought before the Circuit Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on writ of error, in 1822. The action was for the penalty under the law of 1793 for obstructing the plaintiff, a citizen of Maryland, in seizing his escaped slave in Philadelphia for the purpose of taking him before a magistrate there to prove property. The trial in the United States District Court had terminated in a verdict of $500 for the slave-owner. Judge Washington, of the Circuit Court, decided, however, that there was an error in the judgment of the lower court, that the judgment must be reversed with costs, and the cause remitted to the District Court in order that a new trial might be had. This case is known in the law books as the case of Hill vs. Low.[804]

[804] Washington's Circuit Court Reports, 327-331.

Occasionally an attempt at rescue ended in the arrest and imprisonment of the slave-catchers, as well as the release of the captured negro. When a party of rescuers went to such a length as here indicated it laid itself liable to an action for damages on the ground of false imprisonment, as well as to prosecution for the penalty under the Fugitive Slave Law. This is illustrated in the case of Johnson vs. Tomkins, a case belonging to the year 1833.[805] It was the outgrowth of the attempt of a master to reclaim his slave from the premises of a Quaker, John Kenderdine, of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Before the slave-owner could return to New Jersey, the state of his domicile, he and his party were overtaken, and after violent handling in which the master was injured, they were taken into custody, and were forthwith prosecuted. The trial ended in the acquittal of the company from New Jersey, whose seizure of the negro was found to be justifiable. Then followed the prosecution of some of the Pennsylvania party for trespass and false imprisonment, before the Circuit Court of the United States. The fact that the defendants were all Quakers was noted by the judge, who found it "hard to imagine" the motives by which these persons, "members of a society distinguished for their obedience and submission to the laws" were actuated. The question of damages was left exclusively to the jury. The verdict rendered was for $4,000, and the court gave judgment on the verdict.[806]

[805] Baldwins Circuit Court Reports, 571-605.

[806] Washington's Circuit Court Reports, 327-331.

The law of 1793 provided a double penalty for those guilty of transgressing its provisions: first, the forfeiture of a sum of $500 to be recovered for the benefit of the claimant by action of debt; secondly, the payment of such damages as might be awarded by the court in an action brought by the slave-owner on account of the injuries sustained through the loss, or even the temporary absence, of his property. In the famous case of Jones vs. Van Zandt, which was pending before the United States courts, in Ohio and at Washington, for five years, from 1842 to 1847, the defendant was compelled to pay both penalties. In April, 1842, Mr. Van Zandt, an anti-slavery Kentuckian, who had settled at Springdale, a few miles north of Cincinnati, Ohio, was caught in the act of conveying a company of nine fugitives in his market-wagon at daybreak one morning, and, notwithstanding the efforts of the slave-catchers, one of the negroes escaped. The trial was held before the United States Circuit Court at its July term, 1843. The jury gave a verdict for the claimant of $1,200 in damages on two counts.[807] Besides the suit for damages, an action was brought against Van Zandt for the penalty of $500. In this action, as in the other, the verdict was for Jones, the plaintiff. The matter did not end here, however, and was carried on a certificate of division in opinion between the judges to the Supreme Court of the United States. The decision of this court was also adverse to Van Zandt, and final judgment was entered against him for both amounts. This settlement was reached at the January term in 1847.[808]

[807] McLean's Reports, 612.

[808] Howard's Reports, 215-232; see also Schuckers, Life and Public Services of S. P. Chase, 53-66; Warden, Private Life and Public Services of S. P. Chase, 296-298.

The successful rescue of a large company of slaves was likely to make the adventure a very expensive one for the responsible persons that took part in it. Such was the experience of the defendants in the case of Giltner vs. Gorham and others, determined in 1847. Six slaves, the chattels of Mr. Giltner, a citizen of Carroll County, Kentucky, were discovered and arrested in Marshall, Michigan, by the agents of the claimant, but through the intervention of the defendants were set at liberty. Action was brought to recover the value of the negroes, who were estimated to be worth $2,752. In the first trial the jury failed to agree. At the succeeding term of court, however, a verdict for the value of the slaves was found for the plaintiff.[809]

[809] McLean's Reports, 402-426.

The value of four negroes was involved in the case of Norris vs. Newton and others. These negroes were found in September, 1849, after two years' absence from Kentucky, living in Cass County, Michigan. Here they had taken refuge among abolitionists and people of their own color. They were at once seized by their pursuers and conveyed across the line into Indiana, but had not been taken far when their progress was stopped by an excited crowd with a sheriff at its head. The officer had a writ of habeas corpus, and the temper of the crowd would admit of no delay in securing a hearing for the fugitives. The court-house at South Bend, whither the captives were now taken, was at once crowded with spectators, and the streets around it filled with the overflow. The negroes were released by the decision of the judge, but were rearrested and placed in jail for safe-keeping. On the following day warrants were sworn out against several members of the Kentucky party, charging them with riot and other breaches of the peace, and civil process was begun against Mr. Norris, the owner of the slaves, claiming large damages in their behalf. Meanwhile companies of colored people, some of whom had firearms and others clubs, came tramping into the village from Cass County and the intermediate country. Fortunately a demonstration by these incensed bands was somehow avoided. Two days later the fugitives were released from custody on a second writ of habeas corpus, and, attended by a great bodyguard of colored persons, were triumphantly carried away in a wagon. The slave-owner, the charges against whom were dropped, had declined to attend the last hearing accorded his slaves, declaring that his rights had been violated, and that he would claim compensation under the law. Suit was accordingly brought in the Circuit Court of the United States in 1850, and the sum of $2,850 was awarded as damages to the plaintiff.[810]

[810] 5 McLean's Reports, 92-106.

Another case in which large damages were at stake was that of Oliver vs. Weakley and others, tried in the United States Circuit Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, in October term, 1853. It was alleged and proved that Mr. Weakley, one of the defendants, had given shelter in his barn to several slaves of the plaintiff, who was a citizen of Maryland. The jury failed to agree on the first trial. A second trial was therefore held, and this time a verdict was reached; one of the defendants was found guilty, and damages to the amount of $2,800 were assessed upon him; the other defendants were declared "not guilty."[811]

[811] 2 Wallace Jr.'s Reports, 324-326.

The dismissal without proper authority of seven fugitives from the custody of their captors at Sandusky, Ohio, by Mr. Rush R. Sloane, a lawyer of that city, led to the institution of two suits against him by Mr. L. F. Weimer, the claimant of three of the slaves. The suits were tried before the District Court of the United States at Columbus, Ohio, in 1854, and a verdict for $3,000 and costs was returned in favor of the slaveholder. The costs amounted to $330.30, and the defendant had also to pay $1,000 in attorneys' fees. Some friends of Mr. Sloane in Sandusky formed a committee and collected $393, an amount sufficient to pay the court and marshal's costs, but the judgment and the other expenses were borne by the defendant individually.[812]

[812] 6 McLean's Reports, 259-273. Mr. Sloane's account of the case will be found in The Firelands Pioneer for July, 1888, pp. 46-49. A copy of the certificate of the clerk of court there given is here reproduced:--

"Louis F. Weimer vs. Rush R. Sloane. United States District of Ohio, in debt.

OCTOBER TERM, 1854.

Judgment for Plaintiff for $3000 and costs.

Received July 8th, 1856, of Rush R. Sloane, the above Defendant, a receipt of Louis F. Weimer, the above Plaintiff, bearing date Dec. 14th, 1854, for $3000, acknowledging full satisfaction of the above judgment, except the costs; also a receipt of L. F. Weimer, Sr., per Joseph Doniphan, attorney, for $85, the amount of Plaintiff's witness fees in said case; also certificates of Defendant's witnesses in above case for $162; also $20 in money, the attorney's docket fees attached, which, with the clerk and marshal's fees heretofore paid, is in full of the costs in said case.

(Signed) WILLIAM MINER, Clerk."

The burden of the penalty, of which, as we have just seen, a small fraction was assumed by sympathizers with the offender in the case of Mr. Sloane, was altogether removed by friendly contributors in the case of another citizen of Sandusky. Two negroes from Kentucky, who were being cared for at the house of Mr. F. D. Parish, were protected from arrest by their benefactor in February, 1845. As Parish was a fearless agent of the Underground Road, the fugitives were not seen afterwards in northern Ohio. The result was that Parish was required to undergo three trials, and in the last, in 1849, the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Ohio fined him $500, the estimated value of the slaves at the time. This sum, together with the costs and expenses, amounting to as much more, was paid by friends of Mr. Parish, who made up the necessary amount by subscriptions of one dollar each.[813]

[813] For the first trial (1845), see 3 McLean's Reports, 631; s. c. 5 Western Law Journal, 25; 7 Federal Cases, 1100; for the second trial (1847), see 10 Law Reporter, 395; s. c. 5 Western Law Journal, 206; 7 Federal Cases, 1093; for the third trial (1849), see 5 McLean's Reports, 64; s. c. 7 Western Law Journal, 222; 7 Federal Cases, 1095. See also The Firelands Pioneer, July, 1888, pp. 41, 42.

It will have been noticed that the Van Zandt and Parish cases were in litigation for about five years each. A famous Illinois case, that of Dr. Richard Eells, occupied the attention of the courts and of the public more or less during an entire decade. The incidents that gave rise to this case occurred in Adams County, Illinois, in 1842. In that year Mr. Eells was indicted for secreting a slave owing service to Chauncey Durkee, of Missouri, and was convicted and sentenced to pay a fine of $400 and the costs of the prosecution. The case was taken on writ of error first to the Supreme Court of the state, and after the death of Mr. Eells to the Supreme Court of the United States. In both instances the judgment of the original tribunal was confirmed. The decision of the federal court was reached at its December term for 1852.[814]

[814] 5 Illinois Reports, 498-518; 14 Howard's Reports, 13, 14.

It was sometimes made clear in the courts that the defendants in cases arising under the Fugitive Slave laws were persons in the habit of evading the requirements of these laws. This is true of the case of Ray vs. Donnell and Hamilton, which was tried before the United States Circuit Court in Indiana, at the May term, 1849. A slave woman, Caroline, and her four children fled from Kemble County, Kentucky, and found shelter in a barn near Clarksburg, Indiana. Here they were discovered by Woodson Clark, a farmer living in the neighborhood, who took measures immediately to inform their master, while the slaves were removed to a fodder-house for safe-keeping. In some way Messrs. Donnell and Hamilton learned of the capture of the negroes by Mr. Clark, and secured a writ of habeas corpus in their behalf; but, if the testimony of Mr. Clark's son, supported by certain circumstantial evidence, is to be credited, the blacks were released from custody by the personal efforts of the defendants, and not by legal process. Considerable evidence conflicting with that just mentioned appears to have had little weight with the jury, for it gave a verdict for the claimant and assessed his damages at $1,500.[815]

[815] 4 McLean's Reports, 504-515.

In the trial of Mitchell, an abolitionist of the town of Indiana, Pennsylvania, in 1853, for harboring two fugitives, some of the evidence was intended to show that he was connected with a "regularly organized association," the business of which was "to entice negroes from their owners, and to aid them in escaping to the North." The slaves he was charged with harboring had been given employment on his farm in the country, where, as it was thought, they would be secure. After remaining about four months they were apprised of danger and escaped. Justice Grier charged the jury to "let no morbid sympathy, no false respect for pretended 'rights of conscience,' prevent it from judging the defendant justly." A verdict of $500 was found for the plaintiff.[816]

[816] 2 Wallace Jr.'s Reports, 313, 317-323.

Penalties for hindering the arrest of a fugitive slave were imposed in two other noted cases, which deserve mention here, although they are considered at length in another connection. One of these was Booth's case, with which the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, and the District and Supreme Courts of the United States dealt between the years 1855 and 1858. The sentence pronounced against Mr. Booth included imprisonment for one month and a fine of $1,000 and costs--$1,451 in all.[817] The other case was what is commonly known as the Oberlin-Wellington case, tried in the United States District Court at Cleveland, Ohio, in 1858 and 1859. Only two out of the thirty-seven men indicted were convicted, and the sentences imposed were comparatively light. Mr. Bushnell was sentenced to pay a fine of $600 and costs and to be imprisoned in the county jail for sixty days, while the sentence of the colored man, Langston, was a fine of $100 and costs and imprisonment for twenty days.

[817] 21 Howard's Reports, 510; The Fugitive Slave Law in Wisconsin, with Reference to Nullification Sentiment, by Vroman Mason, p. 134.

In all of the cases thus far considered the charges upon which the transgressors of the Fugitive Slave laws were prosecuted were, in general terms, harboring and concealing runaways, obstructing their arrest, or aiding in their rescue. There was, however, one case in which the crime alleged in the indictment was much more serious, being nothing less than treason against the United States. This was the famous Christiana case, marked not only by the nature of the indictment, but by the organized resistance to arrest made by the slaves and their friends, and by the violent death of one of the attacking party. The frequent abduction of negroes from the neighborhood of Christiana, in southeastern Pennsylvania, seems to have given occasion for the formation, about 1851, of a league for self-protection among the many colored persons living in that region.[818] The leading spirit in this association was William Parker, a fugitive slave whose house was a refuge for other runaways. On September 10, Parker and his neighbors received word from the Vigilance Committee of Philadelphia that Gorsuch, a slaveholder of Maryland, had procured warrants for the arrest of two of his slaves, known to be staying at Parker's house. When, therefore, Gorsuch with his son and some friends appeared upon the scene about daybreak on the morning of the 11th, and, having broken into the house, demanded the fugitives, the negroes lost little time in sounding a horn from one of the upper-story windows to summon their friends. From fifty to one hundred men, armed with guns, clubs and corn-cutters, soon came up. Castner Hanway and Elijah Lewis, two Quakers, who had been drawn to the place by the disturbance, declined to join the marshal's posse and help arrest the slaves; but they advised the negroes against resisting the law, and warned Gorsuch and his party to depart if they would prevent bloodshed. Neither side would yield, and a fight was soon in progress. In the course of the conflict the slave-owner was killed, his son severely wounded, and the fugitives managed to escape.

[818] Smedley, Underground Railroad, pp. 107, 108; 2 Wallace Jr.'s Reports, 159.

The excitement caused by this affair extended throughout the country. The President of the United States placed a company of forty-five marines at the disposal of the United States marshal, and these proceeded under orders to the place of the riot. A large number of police and special constables made search far and wide for those concerned in the rescue. Their efforts were rewarded with the arrest of thirty-five negroes and three Quakers, among the latter Hanway and Lewis, who gave themselves up. The prisoners were taken to Philadelphia and indicted by the grand jury for treason. Hanway was tried before the Circuit Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in November and December, 1851. In the trial it was shown by the defence that Mr. Hanway was a native of a Southern state, had lived long in the South, and, during his three years' residence in Pennsylvania, had kept aloof from anti-slavery organizations and meetings; his presence at the riot was proved to be accidental. Under these circumstances the charge of Justice Grier to the jury was a demonstration of the unsoundness of the indictment: the judge asked the jury to observe that a conspiracy to be classed as an act of treason must have been for the purpose of effecting something of a public nature; and that the efforts of a band of fugitive slaves in opposition to the capture of any of their number, even though they were directed by friends and went the full length of committing murder upon their pursuers, was altogether for a private object, and could not be called "levying war" against the nation. It did not take the jury long to decide the case. After an absence of twenty minutes the verdict "not guilty" was returned. One of the negroes was also tried, but not convicted. Afterward a bill was brought against Hanway and Lewis for riot and murder, but the grand jury ignored it, and further prosecution was dropped.[819]

[819] Still's Underground Railroad Records, pp. 348-368; Smedley, Underground Railroad, pp. 107-130; 2 _Wallace Jr.'s Reports_, pp. 134-206; M. G. McDougall, Fugitive Slaves, pp. 50, 51; Wilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, Vol. II, pp. 328, 329.

One cannot examine the records of the various cases that have been passed in review in the preceding pages of this chapter without being struck in many instances by the character of the men that served as counsel for fugitive slaves and their friends. It not infrequently happens that one comes upon the name of a man whose principles, ability and eloquence won for him in later years positions of distinction and influence at the bar and in public life. In the Christiana case, for example, Thaddeus Stevens was a prominent figure; in the Van Zandt case Salmon P. Chase and William H. Seward presented the arguments against the Fugitive Slave Law before the United States Supreme Court;[820] Mr. Chase also appeared in Eells' case, and in the case known as ex parte Robinson, besides others of less judicial importance. Rutherford B. Hayes took part in a number of fugitive slave cases in Cincinnati, Ohio. A letter written by the ex-President in 1892 says: "As a young lawyer, from the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law until the war, I was engaged in slave cases for the fugitives, having an understanding with Levi Coffin and other directors and officers of the U. R. R. that my services would be freely given."[821] John Jolliffe, another lawyer of Cincinnati, less known than the anti-slavery advocates already mentioned, was sometimes associated with Chase and Hayes in pleading the cause of fugitives.[822] The Western Reserve was not without its members of the bar that were ready to display their legal talent in a movement well grounded in the popular mind of eastern Ohio. An illustration is afforded by the trial of the Oberlin-Wellington rescuers, when four eminent attorneys of Cleveland offered their services for the defence, declining at the same time to accept a fee. The event shows that the political aspirations of these men were not injured by their procedure, for Mr. Albert G. Riddle, who spoke first for the defence, was elected to Congress from the Cleveland district the following year, and Mr. Rufus P. Spalding, one of his associates, was similarly honored by the same district in 1862.[823] In November, 1852, the legal firm of William H. West and James Walker, of Bellefontaine, Ohio, attempted to release from custody several negroes belonging to the Piatt family of Kentucky, before their claimants could arrive to prove property. The attempt was successful, and, by prearrangement, the fugitives were taken into a carriage and driven rapidly to a neighboring station of the Underground Railroad. The funds to pay the sheriff, the court expenses and the livery hire were borne in part by Messrs. West and Walker.[824]

[820] Wilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, Vol. I, p. 477.

[821] Letter of Mr. Hayes, Fremont, O., Aug. 4, 1892.

[822] Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, pp. 548, 549.

[823] Rhodes, History of the United States, Vol. II, p. 364. The others representing the rescuers were Franklin T. Backus and Seneca O. Griswold. See J. R. Shipherd's History of the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue, p. 14.

[824] Conversation with Judge William H. West, Bellefontaine, O., Aug. 11, 1894.

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]

[825] M. G. McDougall, Fugitive Slaves, p. 35.

[826] Ibid., pp. 44, 46, 47.

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]

[827] G. H. Woodruff, History of Will County, Illinois, p. 264.

[828] The Ottawa Republican, Nov. 9, 1891. The hearing occurred Oct. 20, 1859.

[829] The Pontiac (Ill.) Sentinel, 1891-1892.

[830] The Tabor (Ia.) Beacon, 1890-1891, Chap. XXI of a series of articles by the Rev. John Todd, on "The Early Settlement and Growth of Western Iowa."

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]

[831] Underground Railroad Records, p. 367.

[832] Smedley, Underground Railroad, p. 359.

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]

[833] This case is given by Mr. Noah Brooks, in his Washington in Lincoln's Time, 1895, pp. 197, 198.

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.

[834] Wilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, Vol. III, p. 395.

[835] Congressional Globe, Thirty-seventh Congress, First Session, 1356.

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]

[836] Liberator, May 1, 1863. Extract from the _Frankfort Commonwealth_, quoted by M. G. McDougall, Fugitive Slaves, p. 80.

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.

[837] Congressional Globe, Thirty-eighth Congress, First Session, 2913. See also M. G. McDougall, Fugitive Slaves, p. 85.

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