Chapter X: The Underground Railroad in Politics (1)

To set forth the political aspect of the Underground Railroad is not easy. Yet this side must be understood if the Underground Railroad is to appear in its true character as something more than a mere manifestation of the moral sentiment existing in the North and in some localities of the South. The romantic episodes in the fugitive slave controversy have been frequently described; but it has altogether escaped the eye of the general historian that the underground movement was one that grew from small beginnings into a great system; that it must be reckoned with as a distinct causal factor in tracing the growth of anti-slavery opinion; that it furnished object lessons in the horrors of slavery without cessation during two generations to communities in many parts of the free states; that it was largely serviceable in developing, if not in originating, the convictions of such powerful agents in the cause as Harriet Beecher Stowe and John Brown; that it alone serves to explain the enactment of that most remarkable piece of legislation, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850; and, finally, that it furnished the ground for the charge brought again and again by the South against the North of injury wrought by the failure to execute the law, a charge that must be placed among the chief grievances of the slave states at the beginning of the Civil War.

Even in colonial times there was difficulty in recovering fugitive slaves, because of the aid rendered them by friends, as is apparent from an examination of some of the regulations that the colonies began to pass soon after the introduction of slavery in 1619. The Director and Council of New Netherlands enacted an ordinance as early as 1640, one of the provisions of which forbade all inhabitants of New Netherlands to harbor or feed fugitive servants under a penalty of fifty guilders, "for the benefit of the Informer; 1/3 for the new Church and 1/3 for the Fiscal."[838] Other regulations for the same colony contained clauses prohibiting the entertainment of runaways; such are the laws of 1642,[839] 1648,[840] 1658,[841] and, after the Dutch had been supplanted by English control, those of 1702[842] and 1730.[843] An act of Virginia that went into force in 1642 was attributed to the complaints made at every quarter court "against divers persons who entertain and enter into covenants with runaway servants and freemen who have formerly hired themselves to others, to the great prejudice if not the utter undoing of divers poor men, thereby also encouraging servants to run from their masters and obscure themselves in some remote plantation." By way of penalty, to break up the practice of helping runaways, this law provided that persons guilty of the offence were to be fined twenty pounds of tobacco for each night's hospitality.[844] That the law was ineffectual is indicated by the increase of the penalty in 1655 by the addition to the twenty pounds of tobacco for each night's entertainment of forty pounds for each day's entertainment.[845] Similar acts were passed by Virginia in 1657,[846] 1666,[847] and 1726.[848] The last act required masters of vessels to swear that they would make diligent search of their craft to prevent the stowing away of servants or slaves eager to escape from their owners. An act of Maryland passed in 1666 established a fine of five hundred pounds of casked tobacco for the first night's hospitality, one thousand pounds for the second, and fifteen hundred pounds for each succeeding night.[849] A law of New Jersey in 1668 laid a penalty of five pounds in money and such damages as the court should adjudge upon any one transporting or contriving the transportation of an apprentice or servant;[850] while another law, enacted seven years later, declared that every inhabitant guilty of harboring an apprentice, servant or slave, should forfeit to his master or dame ten shillings for every day's concealment, and, if unable to pay this amount, should be liable to the judgment of the court.[851] Provisions are also to be found in the regulations of Massachusetts Bay,[852] Rhode Island,[853] Connecticut,[854] Pennsylvania[855] and North Carolina,[856] clearly intended to discourage the entertainment or the transportation of fugitives. It is interesting to note that in these early times Canada was a refuge for fugitives. In 1705 New York passed a law, which was reënacted ten years later, to prevent the escape of negro slaves from the city and county of Albany to the French in Canada. The reason given for the law was the necessity of keeping from the French in time of war knowledge that might prove serviceable for military purposes.[857]

[838] _Laws and Ordinances of New Netherlands_, 32.

[839] _Ibid._

[840] _Ibid._, 104.

[841] _Laws of New Netherlands_, 344.

[842] _Acts of Province of New York from 1691 to 1718_, p. 58.

[843] _Ibid._, 193.

[844] _Statutes at Large_, Hening, _Laws of Virginia_, I, 253.

[845] _Ibid._, I, 401.

[846] _Ibid._, I, 439.

[847] _Ibid._, II, 239.

[848] _Ibid._, IV, 168.

[849] _Maryland Archives, Assembly Proceedings_, 147.

[850] _New Jersey Laws_, 82.

[851] _Ibid._, 109.

[852] _Charters and General Laws of the Colony and Province of
Massachusetts Bay_, 386, 750 (1707 and 1718 respectively).

[853] _Proceedings of General Assembly, Colony of Rhode Island
and Providence Plantations, Providence_, 177; _Records of Colony
of Rhode Island_, 177.

[854] _Acts and Laws of His Majestie's Colony of Connecticut_,
229 (1730 probably).

[855] _Province Laws of Pennsylvania_, Philadelphia, 1725;
_Province Laws of Pennsylvania_, 325.

[856] _Laws of North Carolina_, 89 (1741); _Ibid._, 371 (1779).

[857] _Acts of Province of New York_, 77 (1705); _Laws of
Province of New York_, 218 (1715); Marion G. McDougall, _Fugitive
Slaves_, 8.

the multi-millionnaire, whose mansion in Peterboro, New York, was a station.]

who kept a room in his house in Jefferson, Ohio, for fugitives.]

THE CHAMPION OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.]

COUNSEL FOR COLORED REFUGEES IN BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.]

The group of enactments just considered together with many other early measures relating to the subject of fugitives makes it clear that the question of extradition of runaway slaves had also arisen in colonial times. A stipulation for the return of fugitives had been inserted in the formal agreement entered into by Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Haven at the time of the formation of the New England Confederation in 1643,[858] and may be supposed to have remained in force for a period of forty years. In the first national constitution, the Articles of Confederation adopted in 1781, no such provision was made. This omission soon became serious through the action of the states of Vermont, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island between 1777 and 1784 in taking steps toward immediate or gradual emancipation; for the first time the question of the status of fugitives in free regions was now raised.

[858] _Plymouth Colony Records_, IX, 5; Marion G. McDougall,
_Fugitive Slaves_, 7.

When, in 1787, the question arose of providing a government for the territory northwest of the Ohio River, the difficulty was felt; and the Northwest Ordinance included a clause for the reclamation of fugitives from labor. A proposition made by Mr. King in 1785 to prohibit slavery in this region without any provision for reclaiming fugitives had gone to committee, but was never afterwards called up in Congress. In the discussion of 1787 an amendment was offered by Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts, the first clause of which excluded slavery from the territory, and the second clause provided for the rendition of fugitives. The previous delay and the prompt and unanimous approval of the compromise measure of Mr. Dane give force to the contention of a special student of the Ordinance, that the stipulation forbidding slavery could not have been adopted without the provision for the recovery of runaways.[859]

[859] Peter Force, on the Ordinance of 1787, in the _National
Intelligencer_, 1847. See also E. B. Chase's volume, entitled
_Teachings of Patriots and Statesmen, or the "Founders of the
Republic" on Slavery_, 1860, pp. 155, 160, 161, 169.

About six weeks after the incorporation, by the Continental Congress, of the fugitive slave clause in the Northwest Ordinance, a similar provision was made a part of the Constitution of the United States by the vote of the Federal Convention at Philadelphia.[860] In the case of the Constitution, as of the Ordinance, the clause was probably necessary for the acceptance and adoption of the instrument, and the action of the legislative body was unanimous.[861]

[860] E. B. Chase, _Teachings of Patriots and Statesmen ... on
Slavery_, p. 9.

[861] Alexander Johnston's careful survey of the subject in
the _New Princeton Review_, Vol. IV, p. 183; J. H. Merriam,
_Legislative History of the Ordinance of 1787_, Worcester, 1888;
M. G. McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, p. 64.

The settlement reached in regard to fugitives appears to have excited little comment in the various state conventions called to ratify the work of the Philadelphia Convention. It would be interesting to know what was the nature of the discussion on the point in the North. In the South the tone of sentiment concerning the matter is illustrated by the remarks of Madison in the Virginia convention, and of Iredell and Pinckney in the conventions of North and South Carolina respectively.[862] Madison asserted of the fugitive clause that it "secures to us that property which we now possess." Iredell explained that "In some of the Northern states they have emancipated all their _slaves_. If any of our slaves go there and remain there a certain time, they would, by the present laws, be entitled to their freedom, so that their masters could not get them again. This would be extremely prejudicial to the inhabitants of the Southern states; and to prevent it this clause is inserted in the Constitution. Though the word _slave_ is not mentioned, this is the meaning of it." Pinckney declared: "We have obtained a right to recover our slaves, in whatever part of America they may take refuge, which is a right we had not before. In short, considering the circumstances, we have made the best terms for the security of this species of property it was in our power to make. We would have made better if we could; but, on the whole, I do not think them bad."[863]

[862] These views are quoted by E. B. Chase, in his _Teachings of
Patriots and Statesmen ... on Slavery_.

[863] _Ibid._ See also Elliot's _Debates_, Vol. III, 182, 277.

The constitutional provision was, of course, general in its terms, and, although mandatory in form, did not designate any particular officer or branch of government to put it into execution. Accordingly the law of 1793 was enacted. This law, however, was of such a character as to defeat itself from the beginning. Before the close of the year in which the measure was passed a case of resistance occurred, which showed that adverse sentiment existed in Massachusetts,[864] and three years later another case--especially interesting because it concerned an escaped slave of Washington--demonstrated to the first President that there was strong opposition in New Hampshire to the law.[865] The method of proof prescribed by the measure was intended to facilitate the recovery of fugitives, but it was so slack that it encouraged the abduction of free negroes from the Northern states,[866] and thus, by the injustice it wrought, stirred many to give protection and assistance to negroes.[867] The number of cases of kidnapping that occurred along the southern border of the free states between 1793 and 1850 helps doubtless to explain the development of numerous initial stations of the Underground Railroad during this period.

[864] Appendix B, p. 367, 6. First recorded case of rescue
(Quincy's case, Boston).

[865] Appendix B, p. 367. Washington's fugitive, October, 1796.

[866] Chapter II, p. 22; Chapter V, p. 120.

[867] _Ibid._

The inefficiency of the first Fugitive Slave Act was early recognized, and the period during which it was in existence witnessed many attempts at amendment. It is possible that the failure of Washington to recover his slave in 1796 furnished the occasion for the first of these.[868] A motion was made, December 29, 1796, looking toward the alteration of the law.[869] Apparently nothing was done at this time, and the matter lapsed until 1801, when it came up in January and again in December of that year.[870] In the month last named a committee was appointed in the House, which reported a bill that gave rise to considerable debate. This bill provided that employing a fugitive as well as harboring one should be punishable; and that those furnishing employment to negroes must require them to show official certificates and must publish descriptions of them. It is reported that Southern members "considered it a great injury to the owners of that species of property, that runaways were employed in the Middle and Northern states, and even assisted in procuring a living. They stated that, when slaves ran away and were not recovered, it excited discontent among the rest. When they were caught and brought home, they informed their comrades how well they were received and assisted, which excited a disposition in others to attempt escaping, and obliged their masters to use greater severity than they otherwise would. It was, they said, even on the score of humanity, good policy in those opposed to slavery to agree to this law."[871] Northern members did not accept this view of the fugitive slave question, and when the proposed bill was put to vote January 18, 1802, it failed of passage.[872] The division on the measure took place on sectional grounds, all the Northern members but five voting against it, all the Southern members but two for it.[873]

[868] William Goodell, _Slavery and Anti-Slavery_, pp. 231, 232.

[869] _House Journal_, Fourth Congress, Second Session, p. 65;
_Annals of Congress_, pp. 1741, 1767.

[870] _House Journal_, Sixth Congress, Second Session, p. 220;
_Annals of Congress_, p. 1053; _House Journal_, Seventh Congress,
First Session, p. 34; _Annals of Congress_, p. 317.

[871] _House Journal_, Seventh Congress, First Session, p. 125;
_Annals of Congress_, pp. 422, 423.

[872] The vote stood 46 to 43.

[873] _House Journal_, Seventh Congress, First Session, pp. 125,
128; _Annals of Congress_, pp. 423, 425.

For the next fifteen years Congress appears to have given no consideration to the propriety of amending the law of 1793. Its attention was mainly occupied by the abolition of the slave-trade, the agitation preliminary to the War of 1812, and the events of that War.[874] At length, in 1817, a Senate committee reported a bill to revise the law, but it was never brought up for consideration. In the same year a bill was drafted and presented to the House, on account of the need of a remedy for the increased insecurity of slave property in the border slave states. Pindall, of Virginia, seems to have been its originator; at any rate he was the chairman of the committee that reported the proposition. The interest in the discussion that resulted was increased, doubtless, by two petitions, one from the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, asking for a milder law than that in existence, the other from the Baltimore Quakers, seeking some security for free negroes against kidnapping.

[874] W. E. B. Du Bois, _The Suppression of the American Slave
Trade_, pp. 105-109.

The House bill as presented in 1817 secured to the claimant of a runaway the right to prove his title before the courts of his own state, and thus to reclaim his human property through requisition upon the governor of the state in which it had taken refuge; it was further provided that the writ of habeas corpus was to have no force as against the provisions of the proposed act. The objections made to the measure are worth noting. Mr. Holmes, of Massachusetts, disapproved of the effort to dispense with the writ of habeas corpus, stating that such action would remove a safeguard from the liberty of free colored people. Mr. Mason, of the same state, declared against trial by jury, which somebody had proposed, insisting that "juries in Massachusetts would in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred decide in favor of fugitives, and he did not wish his town (Boston) infected with the runaways of the South." Mr. Sergeant, of Pennsylvania, sought to amend the bill by making the judges of the state in which the arrest occurred the tribunal to decide the fact of slavery. And, last of all, Mr. Whitman, of Massachusetts, opposed the provision making it a penal offence for a state officer to decline to execute the act; a point, it should be remarked, that came into prominence in the famous case of Prigg _vs._ Pennsylvania in 1842. Notwithstanding these efforts to modify the bill, it was carried without change, January 30, 1818, by a vote of 84 to 69. In the Senate the bill was not passed without alteration. After a vote to limit the act to four years, the upper House made amendments requiring some proofs of the debt of service claimed other than the affidavit of the claimant, and then passed the act on March 12. The lower House did not find the modified bill to its liking, and therefore declined to consider it further.[875]

[875] _House Journal_, Fifteenth Congress, First Session, pp.
50, 86, 182, 186, 189, pp. 193, 198; _Annals of Congress_, pp.
446, 447, 513, 829-831, 838, 840, 1339, 1393. _Senate Journal_,
Fifteenth Congress, First Session, pp. 128, 135, 174, 202, 227,
228, 233; _House Journal_, p. 328; _Annals of Congress_, pp.
165, 210, 259, 262, 1339, 1716; T. H. Benton, _Abridgment of
the Debates of Congress_, Vol. VI, pp. 35, 36, 37, 110; M. G.
McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, pp. 21-23; Lalor's _Cyclopædia_,
Vol. II, pp. 315, 316; Schouler, _History of the United States_,
Vol. III, p. 144.

This failure to secure a new general fugitive slave act by no means prevented those interested from renewing their endeavors in that direction. Before the close of the year the House was prompted to bestir itself again by a resolution of the Maryland legislature asking protection against citizens of Pennsylvania who were charged with harboring and protecting fugitive slaves.[876] That the allegation was well founded cannot be doubted. Evidence has already been adduced to show that numerous branches of the Underground Railroad had begun to develop in southeastern Pennsylvania as early at least as the year 1800.[877] A month after the presentation of the Maryland resolution a committee of the House was appointed. This committee reported a bill without delay, but again nothing was accomplished. The framing of the Missouri Compromise at the next session of Congress, in 1820, gave opportunity for the incorporation of a fugitive recovery clause, to enable Southern settlers in Missouri and other slave states to recapture their absconding slaves from the free territory north of the new state.[878] The fugitive clause in the Ordinance of 1787 had insured the same right for slave-owners taking land along the western frontier of Illinois.

[876] McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, p. 23.

[877] Chapter II, pp. 21, 22.

[878] _Annals of Congress_, Sixteenth Congress, First Session,
pp. 1469, 1587. McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, p. 23. It will be
remembered that according to the compromise Missouri was to be
admitted into the Union as a slave state, while slavery was to be
prohibited in all other territory gained from France north of 36
degrees 30 minutes. See Appendix A, p. 361.

But of what utility were such provisions unless they could be carried into effect? Immediately after the Missouri Compromise became a law, propositions for new fugitive slave acts were again offered in both the House and the Senate.[879] A later attempt was made in the winter of 1821-1822, when another resolution of the Maryland legislature similar to the one mentioned above was presented. These efforts, like the earlier ones, failed to secure the desired legislation.[880]

[879] _House Journal_, Sixteenth Congress, First Session, p. 427.

[880] _Senate Journal_, Sixteenth Congress, First Session,
pp. 319, 326; _Annals of Congress_, p. 618; _House Journal_,
Seventeenth Congress, First Session, p. 143; _Annals of
Congress_, pp. 553, 558, 710. _Annals of Congress_, Seventeenth
Congress, First Session, pp. 1379, 1415, 1444; Benton,
_Abridgment of the Debates of Congress_, Vol. VI, p. 296;
McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, pp. 23, 24.

The last petition of Maryland to Congress for the redress of her grievance due to the underground operations of anti-slavery Pennsylvanians was made December 17, 1821. The month of January of the same year had witnessed the presentation in Congress of a resolution from the general assembly of Kentucky, protesting against Canada's admission of fugitives to her domain, and requesting negotiation with Great Britain on the subject. In 1826, during the administration of John Quincy Adams, negotiations were at length opened. Henry Clay, then Secretary of State, instructed Mr. Gallatin, the American Minister at the Court of St. James, to propose an agreement between the two countries providing for "mutual surrender of all persons held to service or labor, under the laws of either party, who escape into the territory of the other." His purpose in urging such a stipulation was, he declared, "to provide for a growing evil which has produced some, and if it be not shortly checked, is likely to produce much more irritation." He also stated that Virginia and Kentucky were particularly anxious that an understanding should be reached.

In February, 1827, Mr. Clay again communicated with Mr. Gallatin on the subject, being led to do so by another appeal made to the general government by the legislature of Kentucky. At this time he mentioned the fact that a provision for the restoration of fugitive slaves had been inserted in the treaty recently concluded with the United Mexican States, a treaty, it should be added, that failed of confirmation by the Mexican Senate. About five months later the American Minister sent word to the Secretary of State that the English authorities had decided that "It was utterly impossible for them to agree to a stipulation for the surrender of fugitive slaves," and this decision was reaffirmed in September, 1827.

The positive terms in which this conclusion was announced by the representative of the British government might have been accepted as final at this time had not further consideration of the question been demanded by the House of Representatives. On May 10, 1828, that body adopted a resolution "requesting the President to open a negotiation with the British government in the view to obtain an arrangement whereby fugitive slaves, who have taken refuge in the Canadian provinces of that government, may be surrendered by the functionaries thereof to their masters, upon their making satisfactory proof of their ownership of said slaves." This resolution was promptly transmitted to Mr. Barbour, the new Minister, with the explanation before made to Gallatin, that the evil at which it was directed was a growing one, well calculated to disturb "the good neighborhood" that the United States desired to maintain with the adjacent British provinces. But as in the case of the former attempts to secure the extradition of the refugee settlers in Canada, so also in this, the advances of the American government were met by the persistent refusal of Great Britain to make a satisfactory answer.[881]

[881] Niles' _Weekly Register_, Vol. XXXV, pp. 289-291; S. G.
Howe, _The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West_, pp. 12-14;
William Goodell, _Slavery and Anti-Slavery_, p. 264; M. G.
McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, p. 25.

The agitation in Congress for a more effective fugitive slave law, and the diplomatic negotiations for the recovery of runaways from Canadian soil, which have been recounted in the preceding pages, must be regarded as furnishing evidence of the existence in many localities in the free states of a strong practical anti-slavery sentiment. This evidence is reënforced by the facts presented in the earlier chapters of this volume. The escape of slaves from their masters into the free states and their simple but impressive appeals for liberty were phenomena witnessed again and again by many Northern people during the opening as well as the later decades of the nineteenth century; and deepened the conviction in their minds that slavery was wrong. Thus for years the runaway slave was a missionary in the cause of freedom, especially in the rapidly settling Western states. His heroic pilgrimage, undertaken under the greatest difficulties, was calculated to excite active interest in his behalf. Persons living along the border of the slave states, whose sympathies were stirred to action by their personal knowledge of the hardships of slavery, became the promoters of lines of Underground Railroad, sending or taking fugitives northward to friends they could trust. It was not an infrequent occurrence that intimate neighbors were called in to hear the thrilling tales of escape related in the picturesque and fervid language of negroes that valued liberty more than life. The writer, who has heard some of these stories from the lips of surviving refugees in Canada, can well understand the effect they must have produced upon the minds of the spectators. Many children got their lasting impression of slavery from the things they saw and heard in homes that were stations on the Underground Road. John Brown was reared in such a home. His father, Owen Brown, was among the earliest settlers of the Western Reserve in Ohio that are known to have harbored fugitives, and the son followed the father's example in keeping open house for runaway slaves.[882] As early as 1815 many blacks began to find their way across the Reserve,[883] and it is stated that even before this year more than a thousand fugitives had been assisted on their way to Canada by a few anti-slavery people of Brown County in southwestern Ohio.[884] It is probable that numerous escapes were also being made thus early through other settled regions. The cause for this early exodus is not far to seek. The increase of the domestic slave-trade from the northern belt of slaveholding states to the extreme South, due to the profitableness of cotton-raising, and stimulated by the prohibition of the foreign slave-trade in 1807, aroused slaves to flight in order to avoid being sold to unknown masters in remote regions. The slight knowledge they needed to guide them in a northerly course was easily obtainable through the rumors about Canada everywhere current during the War of 1812.[885] The noticeable political effects of the straggling migration that began under these circumstances is seen in the renewed agitation by Southern members of Congress during the years 1817 to 1822 for a more stringent Fugitive Slave Law, and the negotiations with England several years later looking toward the restoration to the South of runaways who had found freedom and security on Canadian soil.

[882] Chapter II, p. 37.

[883] _Ibid._, pp. 37, 38.

[884] William Birney, _James G. Birney and His Times_, p. 435.

[885] Chapter II, p. 27.

The influence of the Underground Road in spreading abroad an abiding anti-slavery sentiment was, of course, greatly restricted by the caution its operators had to observe to keep themselves and their protégés out of trouble. The deviating secret routes of the great system were developed in response to the need of passengers that were in constant danger of pursuit. It is this fact of the pursuit of runaways into various communities where they were supposed to be in hiding, together with the harsh scenes enacted by hireling slave-catchers in raiding some station of the Underground Road, that gave to the operations of the Road that publicity necessary to make converts to the anti-slavery cause. During the earlier years of the Road's development the pursuit of runaways was not so common as it came to be after 1840, and later, after the passage of the second Fugitive Slave Law in 1850; but cases are recorded, as already noted, in 1793 in Boston, 1804 in eastern Pennsylvania, 1818 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and elsewhere. These are but illustrations of a class of early cases that brought the question of slavery home to many Northern communities with such force as could not have been done in any other way. These cases, like the numerous cases of kidnapping that occurred during the same period, contributed not a little to keep alive a sentiment that was steadily opposed to slavery, and that expressed and strengthened itself in the practice of harboring and protecting fugitives. The great effect upon public opinion of these cases, and such as these, appears from the sad affair of Margaret Garner, a slave-woman who escaped from Boone County, Kentucky, late in January, 1856, and found shelter with her four children in the house of a colored man near Cincinnati, Ohio. Rather than see her offspring doomed to the fate from which she had hoped to save them, she nerved herself to accomplish their death. While her master, successful in his pursuit, was preparing to take them back across the river, she began the work of butchery by killing her favorite child. Before she could finish her awful task she was interrupted and put in prison. The efforts to prevent her return to Southern bondage proved unavailing, and she was at length delivered to her master, together with the children she had meant to kill. President R. B. Hayes, who was practising law in Cincinnati at the time, and lived on a pro-slavery street, told Professor James Monroe, of Oberlin College, that the tragedy converted "the whole street," and that the day after the murder "a leader among his pro-slavery neighbors" called at his house, and declared with great fervor, "Mr. Hayes, hereafter I am with you. From this time forward, I will not only be a black Republican, but I will be a _damned abolitionist_!"[886]

[886] James Monroe, _Oberlin Thursday Lectures, Addresses, and
Essays_, 1897, p. 116. See Appendix B, pp. 367-377, for cases
under the Slave laws.

That the doctrine of immediate abolition should find expression during the years in which the underground movement was in its initial stage of development, is a fact the importance of which should be given due recognition in tracing the growth of anti-slavery sentiment to 1830, and in showing thus what was the preparation of the North for the advent of Garrison and his followers, and for the party movements in opposition to slavery. It is surely worthy of remark in this connection that, of the three men that promulgated the idea of immediate abolition before 1830, one published a book, containing, besides other things, an argument in support of the assistance rendered to fugitive slaves, while another was known both in Ohio and in the Southern states as an intrepid underground operator.

Of the trio the first in point of time as also in pungency of statement was the Rev. George Bourne, who went to live in Virginia about 1809 after several years residence in Maryland. Mr. Bourne's acquaintance with slavery impressed him deeply with the evils of the system, and he accordingly felt constrained to preach and also to publish some vehement protests against it. For this he was persecuted and driven from Virginia, and, like a hunted slave, he found his way in the night into Pennsylvania, where he settled with his family. Among his writings is a small volume entitled _The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable_, published in 1816 and addressed to all that professed to be members of Christian churches. In it the author vigorously and repeatedly urged the "immediate and total abolition" of slavery, and warned his contemporaries of the consequences of continuing the system until by its growth it should endanger the Union. He could discover no palliative suitable to the evil. "The system is so entirely corrupt," he said, "that it admits of no cure but by a total and immediate abolition. For a gradual emancipation is a virtual recognition of the right, and establishes the rectitude of the practice. If it be just for one moment, it is hallowed forever; and if it be inequitable, not a day should it be tolerated."[887]

[887] These quotations are taken from the summary of Bourne's
_The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable_, given in the _Boston
Commonwealth_, July 25, 1885, since the original was inaccessible
to the present writer. The summary is known to be trustworthy.
See _The Life of Garrison_, by his children, Vol. I, postscript
to the Preface, and the references to the original there given.

Eight years after the appearance of the book containing these uncompromising views, a treatise was published at the town of Vevay on the Ohio River in southeastern Indiana by the Rev. James Duncan. This small work was entitled _A Treatise on Slavery, in which is shown forth the Evil of Slaveholding, both from the Light of Nature and Divine Revelation_. The purpose of the work as set forth by the author was to persuade all slaveholders that they were "guilty of a crime, not only of the highest aggravation, but one that, if persisted in," would "inevitably lead them to perdition."[888] He therefore assailed the principle of slavery, denying the argument admitted by some of the apologists for slavery among his contemporaries, namely, "that the emancipation of slaves need not be sudden, but gradual, lest the possessors of them should be too much impoverished, and lest the free inhabitants might be exposed to danger, if the blacks were all liberated at once." This doctrine of the inexpediency of immediate abolition Mr. Duncan denied, taking the position that such excuses would "go to justify the practice of slaveholding, because the only motive that men can have to practise slavery is that it may be a means of preventing poverty and other penal evils. If the fear of poverty or any penal sufferings will exculpate the possessors of slaves from blame for a few months or years, it will do it for life; and if some may be lawfully held to labor without wages, all may be held the same way; and if the principle of slavery is morally wrong, it ought not to be practised to avoid any penal evil, but if just, even the cruel treatment of slaves would not condemn the practice."[889] He maintained that, although the different sections of the country were not equally guilty of the sins of slaveholding, yet the nation as a whole was responsible for the evil,--on account of the number in the free states that were friendly to slavery, on account also of the advocacy by Northern representatives of the policy of slavery extension, and, finally, on account of the slack zeal of some of those inimical to the institution.[890] He proposed that Christians should have no church fellowship with slaveholders; he urged political action against slavery; and he supplemented the assertion that it was the duty of slaves to escape if they could, by the statement that it was impossible for any one to hinder or prevent their escape without flying in the face of the moral law.[891] As regards gradualism, which was practised in some states, he said: "If it is lawful to hold a man in bondage until he is twenty-eight years of age, it must be equally lawful to hold him to the day of his death; and if it is sinful to hold him to the day of his death, it must partake of the same species of crime to hold him until he is twenty-eight."[892] The arguments in support of his position he based largely upon the Decalogue, the Golden Rule and other scriptural injunctions, as well as upon the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.[893] Underground operators always justified themselves on these grounds; and their motives in joining the Liberty and Free Soil parties later--as many of them did--appear not to have been other than the motives of Bourne and Duncan in advocating political action against slavery.

[888] Preface, p. viii.

[889] Preface, pp. vii, viii.

[890] _A Treatise on Slavery_, reprinted by the American
Anti-Slavery Society, 1840, p. 59.

[891] _Ibid._, p. 107. In advocating political action Mr. Duncan
said, "The practice of slaveholding in a slave state need not
deter emancipators or others from the privilege of voting for
candidates to the legislative bodies, or from using their best
endeavors to have men placed in office that would be favorable
to the cause of freedom, and who may be best qualified to govern
the state or commonwealth, but it ought to prevent any from
officiating as a magistrate, when his commission authorizes him
to issue a warrant to apprehend the slave when he is guilty of no
other crime than that of running away from unmerited bondage."
This was not the first time political action was proposed,
for Mr. Bourne declared in his work (_The Book and Slavery
Irreconcilable_): "Every voter for a public officer who will not
destroy the system, is as culpable as if he participated in the
evil, and is responsible for the protraction of the crime." See
the _Boston Commonwealth_, July 25, 1885.

[892] _A Treatise on Slavery_, p. 123.

[893] _Ibid._, pp. 21, 32-40, 82, 84, 87-94, 96, 107. Mr.
Duncan held that slavery was "directly contrary to the Federal
Constitution." See pp. 110, 111.

The last member of the trio who complained of delay in granting freedom to the enslaved was the Rev. John Rankin, the pastor of a Presbyterian church in the town of Ripley on the Ohio River in southwestern Ohio. Long residence in Tennessee and Kentucky had filled him with hatred of slavery, and for this hatred he gave his reasons in a series of thirteen vigorous letters addressed to his brother Thomas, a merchant at Middlebrook, Augusta County, Virginia, who had recently become a slave-owner. The letters were written in 1824, and were collected in a little volume in 1826. In the preface, Mr. Rankin said that the safety of the government and the happiness of its subjects depended upon the extermination of slavery,[894] and in the letters themselves he attacked the system of American slavery in unmistakable language. In principle he stood clearly with Bourne and Duncan, as he afterwards came to the support of Garrison, although he did not use the words "immediate abolition." He held that "Avarice tends to enslave, but justice requires emancipation."[895] He heard with impatience the excuse for continued slaveholding that freedom would ruin the blacks because they were not capable of doing for themselves, and must, therefore, either all starve or steal. With sarcasm he exclaimed, "Immaculate tenderness! Astonishing sympathy! But what is to be dreaded more than such tenderness and sympathy? Who would wish to have them exercised upon himself?... And have not many of those [slaves] who have been emancipated in America become wealthy and good citizens?... We are commanded to 'do justly and love mercy,' and this we ought to do without delay, and leave the consequences attending it to the control of Him who gave the command."[896] It has been noted in another place that Mr. Rankin was for years an active agent of the Underground Railroad, in association with a number of abolitionists of his neighborhood, among whom he was a recognized leader.[897]

[894] _Letters on American Slavery_, Preface, p. iii.

[895] _Ibid._, p. 20.

[896] _Letters on American Slavery_, pp. 104, 107.

[897] Chapter IV, p. 109.

(From a bust by Ellen Rankin Copp, of Chicago, Illinois.)]

The idea has somehow gained credence in the general accounts of the anti-slavery movement that the Garrisonian movement was one that could scarcely be said to have had precursors in the earlier agitation; and the pre-Garrison abolitionists have been thought of, apparently, as marked by mild philanthropy, adherence to law and tolerance. It has been supposed that an interval of inactivity followed upon the earlier movements, and that the later movement was thus a thing apart, radically different in its character from anything that had gone before. In view of the evidence brought together in this volume it is perhaps not too much to say that a real continuity of development is traceable through the period with which we have had to do, and that many little communities throughout the country, under the influences always at work, had germinated the idea of immediate abolition, in support of which texts were easily found in the Bible; and that thus the way had been prepared for the anti-slavery ideas and activities of 1830 and the subsequent years. Mr. Garrison himself "confessed his indebtedness for his views" of slavery to Bourne's _The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable_, next after the Bible itself,[898] and in Number 17 of the first volume of the _Liberator_ appears an extract quoted from Bourne's work.[899] It is certain that Garrison was familiar with the work as early as September 13, 1830,[900] and he may have been so earlier. He arrived at the doctrine during the summer of 1829, before his association with Lundy at Baltimore.[901] It cannot be determined when Garrison first became acquainted with the _Letters on Slavery_ of the Rev. John Rankin, but they seem to have had a wide circulation, for about the year 1825 they had fallen into the hands of the Rev. Samuel J. May, living at the time in Brooklyn, Connecticut, and he had read them with interest.[902] In the second volume of the _Liberator_ Garrison republished these letters, and in after years, on more than one occasion, he acknowledged himself the "disciple" of their author.[903]

[898] _The Life of Garrison_, by his children, Vol. 1, p. 306.

[899] _Ibid._, postscript to Preface.

[900] _Ibid._, p. 207.

[901] _The Life of Garrison_, Vol. I, p. 140.

[902] _Memoir of S. J. May_, by George B. Emerson and others, pp.
76, 78, 87, 139, 140. See also _Life of Garrison_, Vol. I, p.
213, foot-note.

[903] _Life of Garrison_, Vol. I, pp. 305, 306; Vol. III, pp.
379, 380.

The outspoken courage characteristic of the new phase into which the anti-slavery cause passed in 1830 helped to increase the resistance made in the North to the law for the rendition of fugitive slaves. The sympathy with the slave now became vocal in various centres, and made itself heard among the blacks of the South through the passionate and unguarded utterances of their masters. The evidence gathered from surviving abolitionists in the states adjacent to the lakes shows an increased activity of the Underground Road during the decade 1830-1840. The removal of the Indians from the Gulf states and the consequent opening of vast cotton-fields during the period named led many slaves to flee from the danger of transportation to the far South.[904] Under these circumstances pursuits of runaways became more frequent, and were often marked by a display of anger on the part of the pursuing party easily accounted for by the anti-slavery agitation in the free states. Open interference and rescues in which both negroes and whites took part became more common.[905] Many persons of respectability, more courageous than the great majority of their class at that time, not only enrolled themselves in the new anti-slavery societies, but made it a part of their duty to engage in the defence of fugitive slaves. Salmon P. Chase often served as counsel for the captured runaway during this period, and soon gained for himself the unenvied title of "attorney-general for fugitive slaves."[906] Other men of talents, position and education were not behind the rising Ohioan in their protection of the refugee. A formal organization of Underground Railroad workers, with Robert Purvis as president, was effected at Philadelphia in 1838. It is evident that the Underground Railroad was now developing with rapidity. The conditions prevailing in the North and South during the decade 1840-1850 were not less favorable to the escape of slaves, and, in one particular, were more favorable; the decision in the Prigg case in 1842 took away much of the effectiveness of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, and thus made pursuit little less than useless.

[904] G. M. Weston, _Progress of Slavery in the United States_,
p. 22.

[905] McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, pp. 38, 39.

[906] J. W. Schuckers, _The Life and Public Service of Samuel
Portland Chase_, p. 52. For portrait see plate facing p. 254.

About four years before this historic decision was declared, that is to say, in December, 1838, John Calhoun, of Kentucky, sought to introduce a resolution in the House looking towards an enactment making it unlawful for any person to aid fugitive slaves in escaping from their owners, and another making it unlawful for any person in the non-slaveholding states to entice slaves from their owners, the prosecution of offenders against these proposed laws to take place in the courts of the United States. Objections were made to the introduction of these resolutions, and Mr. Calhoun was prevented from getting a reference of the matter to the Committee on the Judiciary by a vote of 107 to 89.[907] When the Prigg decision came, its political significance was quickly shown in the passage of laws by various Northern states forbidding their officers from performing the duties imposed by the act of 1793. From 1842 to 1850, Massachusetts, Vermont, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island passed such laws, and Connecticut, while repealing an earlier law on her statute books as being at the time unconstitutional, retained the portion of it that restrained state officers from assisting in the execution of the act.

[907] _Congressional Globe_, Twenty-fifth Congress, Third
Session, p. 34.

In the meantime the Southern leaders did not fail to note the progress of anti-slavery sentiment north of Mason and Dixon's line. This was not less manifest in the formation of the Liberty party in the early years of the decade 1840-1850, than in the legislative and other opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law. Indeed, so marked an impression had been made upon the minds and sympathies of anti-slavery men by the brave and successful flight of slaves, that a Liberty convention at Peterboro, New York, in January, 1842, issued an address to slaves, declaring that slavery was to be "tortured even unto death," advising them to seek liberty by flight, and assuring them that the abolitionist knew no more grateful employment than that of helping escaping slaves to Canada. In August of the following year the national convention of the new party, comprising nearly a thousand delegates from all the free states except New Hampshire, made the disavowal of the fugitive recovery clause of the Constitution a part of the party platform, voting by a decisive majority "to regard and treat the third clause of the Constitution, whenever applied to the case of a fugitive slave, as utterly null and void; and consequently as forming no part of the Constitution of the United States whenever we are called upon or sworn to support it."[908] About the time of the announcement of this principle, Mr. Garrison issued in behalf of the American Anti-Slavery Society an address to the bondmen of the South, in which they were promised deliverance from their chains, and were encouraged to run away from their masters. "If you come to us, and are hungry," ran the address, "we will feed you; if thirsty, we will give you drink; if naked, we will clothe you; if sick, we will minister to your necessities; if in prison, we will visit you; if you need a hiding-place from the face of the pursuer, we will provide one that even bloodhounds will not scent out."[909]

[908] Wilson, _Rise and Fall of the Slave Power_, Vol. I, pp.
552, 553.

[909] _Ibid._, p. 563.

Such open attacks upon the property rights of planters and slave-traders must have been extremely aggravating to Southerners, and, of course, contributed to bring the question of a more effective Fugitive Slave Law again under the consideration of Congress, notwithstanding the fact that a large share of that body's attention was occupied during the period from 1844 to 1848 with matters connected with the annexation of Texas, the Mexican War and the settlement of the Oregon boundary dispute. In 1847 the legislature of Kentucky presented a petition to Congress urging the importance of new laws so framed as to enable the citizens of slaveholding states to reclaim their negroes when they had absconded into the free states. This resulted in a bill reported in the Senate, but the bill never got beyond its second reading. Two years later an attempt was made in the House to secure legislation for the same object, but the committee to whom the matter was referred seems never to have reported.

At intervals more or less frequent, during a period of more than fifty years, the South had been demanding of Congress adequate protection for its human property against the depredations of those Northerners who rejoiced in the work of secret emancipation. The efforts of the slaveholding section for a stricter fugitive recovery law had uniformly failed down to 1850, and it seems altogether likely that the success won in the year named would not have been realized,[910] if a bill intended to meet the needs of slave-owners had not been made an essential part of the great scheme of compromise for the adjustment of the differences threatening the perpetuity of the Union at the time.[911] The measure that was finally adopted, as a part of the programme of compromise, was one introduced into the Senate by Mr. Mason, of Virginia, in the early part of the first session of the Thirty-first Congress. It was aimed, said its author, at evils "more deeply seated and widely extended than those" his colleague recognized. "The state from whence I came," continued Mr. Mason, "and the states of Kentucky and Maryland, being those states of the Union that border on the free states, have had ample experience, not only of the difficulties, but of the actual impossibility of reclaiming a fugitive when he once gets within the boundaries of a non-slaveholding state."[912] Henry Clay, the author of the Compromise, whose disposition had been to lean to the Northern rather than to the Southern side of the general controversy, expressed the irritation of his own state, Kentucky, when he said concerning the question of fugitive slaves: "Upon this subject I do think that we have just and serious cause of complaint against the free States. I think they have failed in fulfilling a great obligation, and the failure is precisely upon one of those subjects which in its nature is most irritating and inflammatory to those who live in slave States.... It is our duty to make the law more effective; and I shall go with the senator from the South who goes furthest in making penal laws and imposing the heaviest sanctions for the recovery of fugitive slaves and the restoration of them to their owners."[913] Delaware and Missouri had grievances similar to those of Kentucky and other border states. The region constituted by these states suffered heavy losses through the operations of the Underground Railroad.[914]

[910] "The wonder is how such an Act came to pass, even by so
lean a vote as it received; for it was voted for by less than
half of the Senate, and by six less than the number of senators
from the slave states alone. It is a wonder how it passed at
all; and the wonder increases on knowing that, of the small
number that voted for it, many were against it, and merely went
along with those who had constituted themselves the particular
guardians of the rights of the slave states, and claimed a lead
in all that concerned them. These self-instituted guardians
were permitted to have their own way, some voting with them
unwillingly, others not voting at all. It was a part of the plan
of 'compromise and pacification' which was then deemed essential
to save the Union; under the fear of danger to the Union on one
hand, and the charms of pacification and compromise on the other,
a few heated spirits got the control and had things their own
way." Benton's _Thirty Years' View_, Vol. II, p. 780.

[911] See Rhodes' _History of the United States_, Vol. I, pp.
130-136, for a discussion of the question whether the Union was
in danger in 1850.

[912] _Congressional Globe_, Thirty-first Congress, First
Session, Appendix, p. 1583.

[913] _Life and Speeches of Henry Clay_, Vol. II, pp. 641, 643.
The speech from which the above quotations are made was delivered
Feb. 5 and 6, 1850.

[914] _Congressional Globe_, Thirty-first Congress, Second
Session, Appendix, p. 1051; McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, p. 31.

That the cotton states also lost considerable property every year by the escape of slaves to the North appears from a statement of Senator Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi: "Negroes do escape from Mississippi frequently," he said, "and the boats constantly passing by our long line of river frontier furnish great facility to get into Ohio; and when they do escape it is with great difficulty that they are recovered; indeed, it seldom occurs that they are restored. We, though less than the border states, are seriously concerned in this question.... Those who, like myself, live on that great highway of the West--the Mississippi River--and are most exposed, have a present and increasing interest in the matter. We desire laws that shall be effective, and at the same time within the constitutional power of Congress; such as shall be adequate, and be secured by penalties the most stringent which can be imposed."[915] Calhoun admitted that discontent was universal in the South, and declared that conciliation could only come when the North consented to meet certain conditions, one of which was the restoration of fugitive slaves.

[915] _Congressional Globe_, Thirty-first Congress, First
Session, Appendix, p. 1615.