Against this plea, the Republican argued at length that civil government and social order depend on obedience to the law. "The Constitution does not require us to be slave-catchers, nor to withhold our God-speed to a fugitive. Our sympathies are all with him, and they always will be with him. Our simple duty is, when ownership is proved to us through regularly appointed officers, to offer no resistance to his reclamation. If we do, our Constitution is as worthless a piece of parchment as a Mississippi bond."

Through all the exciting discussions and events which followed the passage of the law, the Republican maintained this ground. It earnestly opposed the "higher law" idea as subversive of all civil government. It declared (March 31, 1851) that the only legitimate resource, where the law requires from the individual the active performance of what he thinks wrong, is to decline to obey, and accept the penalty. "All sober men, and all good members of society, agree that the laws of society must be either actively or passively obeyed; that the behests of society, uttered through its recognized channels of authority, are to be wrought out by the individual or suffered in the penalty attached to them." Under the caption "Under which King?" (March 21, 1851), it pressed the alternative-obedience to the law, or disunion and anarchy. "We put it to every man in the community who has cheated himself, or been cheated, into the belief that it is right for him to resist the execution of any of the laws of the land, whether he is willing to assume the political position of Garrison, and thus preserve his consistency, and stand where he can alone defend himself. Will you be a friend or an enemy to the Government? Will you be a citizen or an alien? Will you be a subject, or, in all essential signification of the word, an outlaw?"

These things were not said by way of abstract speculation. A few weeks before, a colored man, Shadrach, had been arrested in Boston as a fugitive, and a mob had carried him from the court-room into safety and freedom. (A little later, in the same city, Thomas Simms was arrested, and by the United States Commissioner was remanded as a slave. The state Supreme Court was vainly appealed to in his behalf. The city authorities coöperated with the Federal officials to guard him from rescue. He was marched through the streets surrounded by three hundred armed policemen, with a body of militia held in reserve in Faneuil Hall, was placed on shipboard, and returned to his master. This was the Republican's comment the day after (April 14, 1851):

"It is a relief to know that this painful affair has ended, and a source of gratification that the laws of the nation, so boldly threatened in the spirit of mobocratic resistance, have been sustained. Yet this relief and this gratification, as they must be to every peaceable and law-loving and law-abiding heart, are dimmed by the sense of individual and social wrong, which is thus brought directly home to us as the result of slavery in our country and our constitution. It is a deep and bitter evil, an anomaly in our Republic, giving the lie to every line of our profession as a people and a nation, and yet a fixed fact, that must be met and treated in a broad and catholic spirit, and not with the cowardice of fanaticism, which would pull down the whole fabric because it has one gross imperfection in its frame. We find no unmixed good anywhere,-not even at the hearthstone of home, and yet we do not propose therefore to destroy our family firesides and put asunder what God has joined together."

At this period there were two forms of occasional disturbance of the peace. Resistance to the return of fugitives was not very frequent, because these renditions were not often attempted, so strong was the popular

antipathy to them, while the public authority was yet generally formidable enough to forbid any active resistance. The other class of disorders was much more frequent, consisting in riotous demonstrations against Abolitionist speakers. The Abolitionists-Garrison, Phillips, and their associates-stood in aggressive opposition to the strongest current of the time. When the mass of the politicians and the people were declaring that the slavery question was settled by the Compromise, the Abolitionists with fresh energy declared it to be a delusive and wicked peace. While the mass of the Northern people felt themselves to have made some sacrifice of feeling for the sake of strengthening the Union, Garrison and his followers assailed the Union itself as cemented in crime and deserving immediate overthrow. They were held in detestation by most of the conservative and respectable elements of society, and those elements did not always care to check the outbreak of popular violence from the lower class against the agitators.

In February, 1851, it was announced that George Thompson, doubly obnoxious as an Abolitionist and an Englishman who had come over to attack American institutions, would speak at a public meeting in Springfield. The meeting was appointed for Monday the 17th. It was loudly threatened that Thompson would not be allowed to appear. A committee of prominent citizens was appointed to warn him that the town was in an excited and dangerous condition. Sunday morning, an effigy of Thompson, and another labeled "John Bull," were found hanging in the principal square of the town. A handbill was widely circulated, headed "Regulators, Attention," making a violent appeal against the "paid emissary and spy of England." It was an undisguised summons to mob Thompson if he attempted to speak.

The Republican of Monday morning reported the facts of the situation, and said, "If Mr. Thompson attempts to fulfill his engagement, there will be a very serious disturbance. We should deeply regret such an occurrence, because it would be subversive of those principles of law and order that are at once the foundation and the safeguard of a republican government; because a gross violation of the free speech of which we boast as one of the greatest liberties guaranteed by our constitution; because disgraceful to our town and country; and because it would tend greatly to assist Mr. Thompson and his American associates in their crusade against our constitution and our government." In another column it said that Mr. Thompson, accompanied by Garrison and Phillips, was to speak in the evening, "for the purpose, we presume, of denouncing the American constitution, libeling the Christian church, and abusing the greatest and best men, living and dead, that have ever impressed their names on the country's history. We allude to this meeting more in sorrow than in any stronger or harsher sentiment, for we presume it will be made, like its long line of predecessors in this and other towns, the scene of pitiful fanaticism, blind perversion of truth, and such handling of sacred things as shall wound the moral sense like the naked blow of blasphemy." It advised citizens to stay away from the meeting, and thus consign it to insignificance and obscurity. The selectmen of the town appointed a few special constables, and notified the proprietors of the hall that the town would not be responsible for any damages; whereupon the proprietors refused the use of the hall, and there was no meeting that day. In the evening a riotous crowd thronged the streets, with bonfires, drums, fifes, bells, and crackers. "Rowdyism was in the highest degree rampant," said the Republican next morning; and it rebuked especially the intelligent and

respectable men whose latent support emboldened the mob. It thus enforced the moral: "In the Faneuil Hall reception of Mr. Thompson, in the treatment he has received here, and in the recent fugitive slave mob in Boston" (the rescue of Shadrach), "there is a trampling upon great principles that shows 'something rotten in the state of Denmark.' We fully understand the motives which were the mainspring of each of these proceedings; we fully appreciate the strength and abstract rightfulness of the feelings that prompted the actors therein; but we mourn in bitterness the terrible lack of judgment and forecast that those professing to be and holding the places of leading men in society, display in countenancing such violation of the first principles of our government."

That day a room was obtained by Mr. Thompson and his friends, in which they held meetings in the forenoon and afternoon. The attendance was small, there was no disturbance, and the speakers were very severe upon the mob, the city authorities, and the Republican. Mr. Thompson charged that the inflammatory handbill was printed at the Republican office, and that the paper had incited the mob. Mr. Bowles addressed a note to Mr. Thompson denying and demanding proof of these statements, and Thompson replied by sharp denunciations. In the evening it was considered unsafe to hold a meeting. Again there were riotous demonstrations, and Mr. Thompson was burned in effigy in front of his room at the hotel. There was no overt violence, and no arrests were made. The Republican the next morning made these occurrences the text of a long editorial on the "Higher Law," an idea of which it declared the mob to be a logical and practical outcome. It recalled the fact that when, a little while before, Marshal Devens visited the town, for the purpose, as was at first believed, of arresting some fugitive slaves, there had been free talk