CHAPTER IX

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW IN OPERATION

A REVIEW of some of the cases which awakened the indignation of the people will illustrate the workings of the Fugitive Slave Law. In April, 1851, a Baltimore officer, accompanied by one from Harrisburg, appeared in Columbia, Pennsylvania, in pursuit of William Smith, alleging that he was a fugitive slave. The negro had resided in Columbia for a year and a half and had a wife and two children. Seized while at work and remonstrating with the officers over his arrest, he was shot by the Baltimore officer, expiring immediately. The legislature of Maryland appointed a commission to collect the facts in the case and to correspond with the Governor of Pennsylvania respecting it, but no action resulted. In the same year a Maryland man seized a colored girl at a home in Nottingham, Pennsylvania, and forced her to enter a carriage in spite of the protests of her mistress that the girl was a free negro and against the earnest endeavors of her master to prevent her capture, even though the former was threatened with a pistol if he did not desist from his efforts in her behalf. The girl was carried to Baltimore and placed in one of the slave pens of that city, but her friends continued their interpositions and succeeded in bringing her case before the courts, where, the kidnapper failing to establish his claim, the girl was released. Her master started to return home with the girl, but was found the next morning nine miles from the city suspended from a tree. As all the circumstances pointed to murder, the Governor of Pennsylvania made requisition upon the Maryland

executive for the kidnapper, but the latter escaped a trial through a witness who swore that the girl's master had admitted to him that she was a slave; testimony which was rebutted by inhabitants of Nottingham, who testified that they had known her from childhood and her parents for twenty years. Still another case, more distressing, occurred in the spring of 1851. A woman bearing the name Hannah Dellan was arraigned before a Philadelphia justice on the charge of being a fugitive, and despite the fact that the woman was about to give birth to a child, the justice, who was subservient to the claimant, prolonged the session of the court in order that the case might be disposed of and the woman taken out of the State of Pennsylvania, thus depriving her offspring of the benefit of birth in a free State.

William and Ellen Crafts, of Georgia, were more fortunate than many fugitives in their success in resisting arrest and return to bondage. The woman was a mulatto of exceptionally light complexion, and donning the garb of a young planter, journeyed North under the pretence of being consumptive and seeking expert medical advice. William took the part of body servant attached to his young master. They followed the most public routes and mingled freely with white persons. They arrived safely in Massachusetts, where they found warm friends who succeeded for a while in frustrating the efforts of their pursuers to find them. In October, 1850, an attempt to arrest the fugitives created a great excitement and gained for them many friends. These persons aided them to escape to England. The men who had gained unenviable notoriety by pursuing the fugitives were made objects of derision upon the street and were waited upon at their hotel by citizens who advised them to leave Boston while they might do so unmolested. They took this advice. But the story of the Crafts is not complete without notice of the active participation in their behalf of the eminent antislavery advocates, Dr. Henry I. Bowditch and Theodore Parker. Crafts barricaded himself in his workshop and

prepared to maintain his liberty to the death, while Ellen was taken out of the city by friends to the home of Ellis Gray Loring, but, fearing that she was not yet safe, Theodore Parker offered her the asylum of his own home, and there she remained in safety until the slave hunters had left the city. The tenseness of the general feeling over the case is shown by the words of the eminent divine who became the woman's protector. Said Mr. Parker: "For two weeks I wrote my sermons with a sword in the open drawer under my inkstand, and a pistol in the flap of the desk, loaded and ready, with a cap on the nipple."

They

A case commonly known as the "Jerry rescue" occurred in Syracuse, New York, in 1851. Jerry McHenry, who had resided in Syracuse for several years, was arrested and arraigned before the commissioner as a fugitive from slavery. During the trial of the case the man made a break for liberty, escaping from the room, but was overtaken and carried fighting and struggling in a wagon through the streets. The circumstance greatly incensed the people, some of whom planned to effect the man's rescue. arranged to break into the court room that evening, overpower the officers, secure the prisoner and carry him to a place of safety. This plan was successfully executed, and, after being kept in concealment for a week, McHenry was assisted to a refuge in Canada. The United States officers determined to make examples of the persons concerned in the rescue, and eighteen of the prominent citizens of Syracuse were indicted and summoned to appear at Auburn to answer for their offence. William H. Seward promptly headed a list of the leading citizens of the State who went surety for the prisoners. This case by reason of the prominence of the persons connected with it became famous. The United States District Attorney served summonses upon several of the persons indicted to appear for trial at Buffalo and Albany. The case, however, went no further, notwithstanding the open avowal of those implicated in the proceedings.

On the 11th of September, 1851,

occurred a case in which the aiders and abettors of the

fugitive did not fare so well. The object of the search was a negro who had escaped from his Maryland owners three years before. The master, Edward Gorsuch, his son and a party of friends went to Christiana, Pennsylvania, to seek the fugitive. The party was accompanied by a United States officer, and armed with a warrant from the commissioner at Philadelphia. They approached the house of William Parker, a colored man, who was harboring the fugitive, and demanded the surrender of the latter, at the same time firing two shots at the house. A number of free negroes and several members of the society of Friends gathered about the house, the former to aid the fugitive and the latter with their counsels of peace. The deputy-martial ordered the Friends to join his posse, but the latter urged him to withdraw with his men for their safety. Persisting in his purpose, Gorsuch and his party fired upon the free negroes and were in turn fired upon. Gorsuch was killed and his son seriously wounded. During the mêlée the fugitive escaped. Intelligence of the conflict created intense excitement and under orders from the president, the United States marshal, the district attorney and the commissioner from Philadelphia with forty-five marines from the navy yard hastened to the scene of disorder. This force was augmented by a large body of special constables and the country was scoured with the result that twenty-four arrests were made of persons supposed to have been implicated, two of them being white and the rest colored. The white men and one of the negroes were brought to trial and were acquitted. The other prisoners were never tried. And yet these few cases of attempts to take fugitive slaves from their asylum in the North represented but an insignificant minority of the actual number of fugitive slaves in Northern States. According to veracious testimony there were fifteen thousand fugitives in the free States.

These cases bore upon discussions in Congress upon its reassembling in December, 1850. A glance at the sentiments

which they evoked will serve further to indicate the curious situation in the country caused by the existence of a law which was repellent to the Northern people, but which many patriotically supported because they believed that it conformed to the Constitution. The president's first annual message struck the keynote which was sounded throughout the discussions of Congress. That portion of his message which related to the compromise measures was as follows: "It was hardly to have been expected that the series of measures passed at your last session, with the view of healing the sectional differences which had sprung from the slavery and territorial questions, should at once have realized their beneficent purpose. All mutual concession in the nature of a compromise must necessarily be unwelcome to men of extreme opinions. And though without such concessions our constitution could not have been formed, and cannot be permanently sustained, yet we have seen them made the subject of bitter controversy in both sections of the republic. It required many months of discussion and deliberation to secure the concurrence of a majority of Congress in their favor. It would be strange if they had been received with immediate approbation by people and States prejudiced and heated by the exciting controversies of their representatives. I believe those measures to have been required by the circumstances and condition of the country. I believe they were necessary to allay asperities and animosities that were rapidly alienating one section of the country from another and destroying those fraternal sentiments which are the strongest supports of the Constitution. They were adopted in the spirit of conciliation and for the purpose of conciliation. I believe that a great majority of our fellow citizens sympathize in that spirit and that purpose, and in the main approve and are prepared in all respects to sustain these enactments. I cannot doubt that the American people, bound together by kindred blood and common traditions, still cherish a paramount regard for the Union of their fathers, and that they