Conflicting Interpretations of the Law

negroes to come in on any boat.* If found on shore, they were at once to be put in jail till the boat left port. On the arrival of a vessel with a crew of free negroes, the harbor-master informed some justice of the peace, who was alert to have proper warrants ready. If one of the free negroes returned, he was liable to imprisonment for five years. Thirty days after his discharge, if found in the State, he would be imprisoned at hard labor for life. A fine of a thousand dollars was imposed on the person who carried a slave to a free State.

As negroes look much alike, a free negro might easily be claimed as a slave. The North accused the South of selling free negroes into slavery under pretence that they were runaway slaves. The South accused the North of carrying away slaves as free negroes. Complaints by individuals easily became the ground of general accusations. Truth, and also violations of law, existed on both sides. As soon as the sacred realm of law was invaded, Governors and legislators roused up, not so much to repel the invaders as to defy one another. The Governors of several Northern States refused to deliver up certain runaway slaves as fugitives from justice. The Governors of several Southern States refused to deliver up certain free negroes who had been seized as slaves. Long and learned were the references to precedentslegislative, constitutional, historical, and judicial. Longer, and no less learned, were the resolutions

*Act of March 16th.

+ Louisiana, act of March 16, 1842.

passed by contending Legislatures, and all with one, and only one, result-each party was the more convinced that he was right. Legislation recriminative in character followed. In the North it was popularly called the personal liberty bills;* in the South it was entitled acts for the further protection of slave property, and for other purposes. The legislative contest began about 1835 and increased in vehemence till the end came-thirty years later.f

The case of the slave "Isaac," the property of one Colley, a citizen of Virginia, renewed the contest. He had been conveyed to New York in a vessel that ran regularly between the two States. Governor Seward refused to return him as a fugitive from justice, on the ground that, as slavery was contrary to the law of nations, the State of New York was under no obligation to deliver him up to the State of Virginia. Virginia replied that the case did not arise under the law of nations, but under a provision of the Constitution of the United States. Nor was it an ordinary provision, but one resulting from a compromise on the making and support of which the existence of the Union depended.

It was not long before other slave-holding States

* New York, May 18, 1840; see Virginia, act of March 18, 1841, passed as a rejoinder; also, act of March 27, 1843.

+ See Louisiana resolutions of March 16, 1842; Georgia resolutions (in reply to the Massachusetts General Court), December 28, 1842; also of December 25, 1843.

See Virginia resolutions in re, March 17, 1840; also, the resolutions of the New York Assembly in re, April 11, 1842.

The Free Negro Admitted to the Franchise

fell into line with Virginia. Resolution after resolution appeared, and threats of disunion were freely and formally made.

The Missouri Compromise was effected at last when that State, by a solemn public act, promised not to exclude free negroes and mulattoes who were citizens of any State. In the year of this promise, 1821, New York revised her constitution and extended to free negroes the right to vote.* This provision was in substance like the act of 1815 respecting such persons. Having proved to the Mayor that he was a freeman and a freeholder having real estate worth twenty pounds, or that he was a tenant paying a rent of forty shillings annually, and also paying a State tax, the free negro in New York City, in 1815, was entitled to receive a certificate from the Recorder, which entitled him to vote. The constitution of 1821 increased the property qualification to two hundred and fifty dollars, and required him to reside in the State two years longer than a white man, but it opened the right of suffrage to him. This provision by New York proved in time to be of far greater importance than the Missouri Compromise. It forced the issue on which the Union depended. It was the right of New York, as of every State, to prescribe qualifications for its citizens. In 1846 the State repeated the provision in its third constitution. It stood alone among the States. Massachusetts, New

*The first discussion of the extension of the suffrage to negroes occurred in the New York convention of 1821. The chief advocate of the innovation was Rufus King.

Hampshire, and Vermont allowed the free negro to vote, with a more liberal suffrage qualification. Elsewhere in the Union the right to vote was denied him. How was this condition of affairs to be harmonized with the national Constitution, which provides that "the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States "? Or with the provision requiring the delivery of persons held to service in one State escaping into another. As a negro slave did not differ in appearance from a negro freeman, and as these were increasing in number at the rate of two a day, and as most of them, like ancient Gaul, looked to the Northwhither also a stream of fugitive slaves was steadily flowing-it was impossible, under the laws, the constitutions, and the public sentiment of the time, to discriminate always between freeman and slave. The commonwealths were, therefore, in confusion over the question of citizenship.

But Northern sympathy, such as it was, reached out only to the fugitive slave. The free negro was as unwelcome North as South.* He lived on the outskirts of towns and villages the American Ishmaelite. Every man's hand was against him. Schools existed, but not for him or his children. Men who were conductors on the underground railroad, or who kept its way-stations, were not al

*Northern sentiment on the subject was typically set forth in the Pennsylvania constitutional convention of 1837. It runs through the thirteen octavo volumes in which the debates of this convention are preserved.

Persecution for Justice' Sake

ways anxious to have negro children attending the same schools with their own. Moreover, most of these schools were pay schools, for the free publicschool system was not inaugurated until about 1842, and was then planned solely for white children.

Nor did hostility cease with the exclusion of negroes from the rate schools and public schools; it was equally fierce at the prospect of schools for negroes only. Reference need only be made to the indignities heaped upon Prudence Crandall, a member of the Society of Friends, who, in 1832, established a school for young women in Canterbury, Connecticut. She admitted one colored girl, and the phials of public wrath were at once emptied on her head. In town-meeting, her school was declared a public nuisance, for she announced that colored girls might attend. She was insulted, slandered, and persecuted in ways that only Yankee genius could devise. Her house was frequently assaulted, her well was filled with filth. She was boycotted by the neighborhood. And who were her neighbors? Lawyers, doctors, farmers, mechanics, clergymen, and the United States district judge. What horror filled these good people at thought of a negro school right at their doors! She was denied a hearing at town-meeting; nor were her friends, among whom were Arthur Tappan and Rev. Samuel J. May, permitted to speak in her behalf. In spite of concerted opposition and persecution, she opened her school with about twenty pupils. Then local wrath took the form of