Chapter X: The Underground Railroad in Politics (3)

Meanwhile the grand jury of Lorain County--the county in which the fugitive had been seized--had indicted four of the slave-catchers under a personal liberty law passed by Ohio in 1857.[956] This procedure led to negotiations, which finally terminated in a compromise between the executors and the opponents of the Fugitive Slave Act. On the one hand the United States authorities agreed to stop prosecution in the remaining rescue cases, while on the other hand the Lorain County people consented to dismiss the suits against the so-called kidnappers. This conclusion of the matter was regarded as a victory for the "higher law" by the friends of the Oberlin parties, and the release of the prisoners was heralded in Cleveland by the firing of a hundred guns. Their return to Oberlin was signalized by a celebration in their honor. The _Cleveland Plain Dealer_ said the government had been "beaten at last with law, justice, and facts all on its side, and Oberlin with its rebellious Higher Law creed is triumphant."[957]

[956] _Ibid._, pp. 231-235.

[957] The _Plain Dealer_, July 6, 1859, quoted by Shipherd, p.
267.

That these events were not without their political influence is apparent from the adoption of a resolution at the great Cleveland convention above mentioned asserting that the chief reliance of freedom in the United States rested in the Republican party.[958] It is worthy of note also that this party at its state convention, held in June, demanded the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act.[959] It has been already pointed out that some of the counsel of the Oberlin rescuers early received places of political preferment, partly at least in consequence of distinction won by them in the defence of those known to be guilty of violating the law of 1850.[960]

[958] Shipherd, _History of the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue_, pp.
253, 254.

[959] The _Cleveland Herald_, June 3, 1859.

[960] Chapter IX, p. 282.

The enactment of personal liberty laws by various Northern states, with the purpose of impairing the efficiency of the Fugitive Slave laws, is characteristic of the period during which the underground system had its most rapid expansion, namely, the two decades from 1840 to 1860. These laws may be fairly considered as the palpable but guarded expression of an opposition that was free to go to the full length in its midnight operation of the Underground Road. During the period indicated occurred the series of celebrated fugitive slave cases, beginning with the Latimer case in 1842; and the precautions, rarely neglected by the friend of the slave, were often forgotten or spurned in the excitement of the instant or in the exaltation of wrath. The rigorous character of the law of 1850 acted in two ways north of Mason and Dixon's line: first, it created a reaction against slavery and brought many recruits into underground work to aid the rapidly increasing number of escaping slaves; second, in connection with the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, it led public sentiment in many states to provide additional safeguards in the form of personal liberty bills for the protection of fugitives and their helpers.[961] These bills ran counter in spirit if not always in letter to legislation that was held by the United States Supreme Court to be in keeping with the constitutional clause providing for the recovery of fugitive slaves. In principle they were, therefore, like the nullification ordinance of 1832.[962]

[961] Joel Parker, _Personal Liberty Laws and Slavery in the
Territories_, 1861, pp. 10, 11.

[962] J. B. Robinson, _Pictures of Slavery and Anti-Slavery_,
1863, pp. 332, 333; M. G. McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, p.
70; Rhodes, _History of the United States_, Vol. II, p. 74.
Mr. Rhodes says of the personal liberty bills: "They were
dangerously near the nullification of a United States law,
and had not the provocation seemed great, would not have been
adopted by people who had drunk in with approval Webster's idea
of nationality.... While they were undeniably conceived in a
spirit of bad faith towards the South, they were a retaliation
for the grossly bad faith involved in the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise. Nullification cannot be defended, but in a balancing
of the wrongs of the South and the North, it must be averred
that in this case the provocation was vastly greater than the
retaliation."

While the system of the Underground Railroad was thus expanding and pressing everywhere against legislative restraints, there arose a man who sought to solve the whole slavery problem in his own rash way. When John Brown led a company of slaves from Missouri to Canada despite the attempts to prevent him; and when soon thereafter he attempted to execute his plan for the general liberation of slaves, he showed the extreme to which the aid to fugitives might lead. The influence of Brown's training in Underground Railroad work is plain in the methods and plans he followed, which have given him a place in American history. Early convinced that action was the thing needed to help the bondman, he set himself to find a way of effecting the destruction of slavery. In devising his scheme he seems to have considered an underground channel of escape as a necessary feature of it for those lacking the courage to join a movement sure to involve them in armed conflict with their masters. This feature was designated the "Subterranean Pass Way." The varying character of the testimony in regard to this feature, as well as the natural change of view that took place in Brown's mind with the passage of the years, does not permit one to say definitely what importance was attached by the liberator to the Pass Way as a part of his plan, but its utility in reducing the value of slaves must have been apparent to him. That the whole movement he contemplated would have the effect of making slave property unstable he showed when speaking of the initiative of the movement in Virginia. Brown said: "If the slaves could in this way be driven out of the county, the whole system would be weakened in that State."[963] In this matter the judgment of the liberator was not at fault, for it has been estimated that his attack on Harper's Ferry caused the value of slave property in Virginia to decline to the extent of $10,000,000.[964] That Brown had the sympathy of a large number of persons in the North, including some public men, was a circumstance calculated to make a deeper impression on the minds of the Southern men generally than this decline in the price of Virginia slaves.

[963] Hinton, _John Brown and His Men_, pp. 31, 32.

[964] _Ibid._, p. 30.

(From a photograph in the possession of the Kansas State Historical Society.)]