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states will approve of the provisions of this bill when they become known to them." Webster's bill was thrown out, and the law in its most obnoxious form was passed, receiving only three votes from Northern Whigs, and with Mr. Winthrop - the successor and representative of Mr. Webster in the Senate- opposing it. Thereafter Webster and the Whigs, and the Republican with them, treated it as the law of the land, entitled to loyal obedience. "That nasty word, Compromise," had been spoken with effect, and the Republican had made but faint opposition. The anti-slavery ground, which it had maintained until now with such heartiness and vigor, was hereafter, for a time, scarcely avowed except in a perfunctory way. The paper was governed by loyalty to an individual and a party, rather than allegiance to an idea.

Webster's position was not without elements of strength. As to the fugitive slave question, he stood on constitutional ground. His devotion to the Union was a great and worthy sentiment. But, waiving all question of ambitious or unworthy motives on his part, he was blind to the handwriting on the wall, which declared an irrepressible conflict between freedom and slavery; and he was insensitive to the moral element, the wrong of slavery, which underlay all constitutions and compromises. In supporting him through this period the Republican subordinated its own best instincts and tendencies.

Yet history, in its calm retrospect, recognizes that Webster and his followers were far other than the mere apostates to freedom which they seemed to the men possessed by the passion of anti-slavery. Webster was identified with a sublime idea-the idea of American nationality. He wrought a supreme service in the earlier days, when in his duels with Calhoun he overmatched the acute logic which claimed for each of the states an independent sovereignty, by maintaining with equal

acumen an organic national unity, and evoking in its defense a grander and mightier sentiment. No American of the first half of this century did so much to root the love of the Union in the minds and hearts of the people as did Webster. It was that love, more than hostility to slavery, which animated the North in the war which established the Union and destroyed slavery. Webster failed to measure the evil of slavery, and the Abolitionists failed no less to measure the evil of disunion. Each of them was devoted to one great idea; and the two ideas, which conflicted for a while, were destined to blend at last into a harmonious and irresistible force. The highest distinction of the radical anti-slavery men was that they gave disinterested service, in which they had generally nothing to gain and much to lose; while in the forces which opposed them patriotism had its allies in the ambition of politicians, the timidity of churches, and the selfishness of commerce.

VOL. I.-6

THE

CHAPTER XI.

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW.

HE Compromise of 1850, inasmuch as it did somehow put an end to the immediate open questions regarding slavery, was accepted by the country with singular unanimity. Two years later, the only party which sought to reopen any of its conclusions - the Freesoil-cast only about 156,000 votes in a total of over 3,000,000. In this acceptance, the Republican was in entire harmony with the general drift, and with the Whig party. Upon the adjournment of Congress, it said, October 1, 1850:

"The measures which have at last been carried form a new era in our history. Time alone can develop the beneficence and efficiency of their operations. They have been the best that could be carried to save the Union from dangers which threatened it, and satisfied with this we may only hope they will work out the great and happy results for which they were designed."

And it steadily advocated the observance of all the provisions thus adopted.

Among these provisions there was one which brought the subject of slavery home to the keenest sensibilities of the Northern people, and forced upon them the sharpest dilemma between the obligations of humanity and those

of citizenship. This was the Fugitive Slave law. The constitution expressly required the rendition from the free states of fugitives who had fled from their masters. By an early act of Congress, provision had been made for the execution of this provision by magistrates in the several states. This law had not been often put in operation. Several of the Northern states had recently enacted statutes intended to obstruct its operations. There were demands from the South for more effective measures. A bill for this purpose, by Mr. Mason of Virginia, was incorporated in the Compromise scheme, and enacted. An efficient bill for this object could not be acceptable to the North. (The point for which the Whigs contended-that the alleged fugitive should be tried by a jury—had its only real importance in the unconfessed presumption that Northern juries would decide not according to the facts but according to their sympathies, and so nullify the law. As adopted, the law gave the decision on the master's claim to a United States commissioner. The law went into operation. It roused throughout the North a wide excitement and exasperation. Many thousands of men and women who had braved hardship and peril in their escape from bondage were living in Northern towns and cities. They were a peaceful, inoffensive class, earning their living by humble labor, in kindly relations with their white neighbors. To every one of these the law came as a deadly menace. Men and women were carried back to bondage from Massachusetts; not by secret kidnappers, but in broad day, with the whole community looking on, with the whole country apprised by telegraph of each step in the rendition, and under the shadow and sanction of the stars and stripes.

To resist was to break the law. To organize resistance was to organize rebellion. The master was in the

exercise of his legal rights. The stipulation which secured to him those rights was one of the mutual concessions through which was made possible the great American republic. If any one may break and resist a law of which he personally disapproves, there is an end of civil government, of social order, of civilization. So argued one party.

Said others: "Not all the laws in the world can justify a direct violation of the sacred obligations of humanity. Human law can no more make such an act right than it can make theft, adultery, murder, right. There is a higher law than that of Congress-it is the law of God. We will aid the fugitive to escape, and if it comes to strife we will side with him rather than his oppressor."

When the bill was under debate, a correspondent, "H.," wrote to the Republican (June 3, 1850) that the people of the North "will aid in the recapture of the fugitive slaves when they forget the Christian law and become callous to every human sentiment—not before. The fate of Mason's bill, or any other on this subject, is of little practical importance. . . . It is much too late to think of enforcing a law so repugnant to the public conscience. Practically and forever this question is settled. Let the slave escape beyond the slave states, and the southern border of the free states, and he will be aided in his escape by every one with whom he meets. And it will be done, not only at the spontaneous prompting of sympathy, but as a sacred duty. No more false pledges should be given to the slave-holders. It is better to tell them honestly: 'It is so writ in the bond,' but it is morally impossible; we cannot and will not do it! If your human cattle escape, we bid them God-speed in the race for liberty, and we cannot do otherwise as long as we are men."

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