would be renewed, and the fires of controversy would be rekindled so long as the District was left open for the admission and residence of free negroes. "It will soon come to pass," he said, "that Congress itself will not find it convenient, if safe, to sit here, beset and surrounded by an overgrown population of colored inhabitants, degraded in caste, and for the most part idle, vicious, and mischievous." Mr. Butler attacked the free States in their vulnerable point, their unjust discrimination against color, and asked whether colored citizens of Massachusetts were allowed to serve in its State militia or on its juries. The remainder of that and the most of the next day were occupied with a debate on the imprisonment of colored seamen in Southern ports, in which Mr. Winthrop bore himself with dignity against the assaults of several Southern Senators, and met their arguments and criticisms with force and eloquence. Mr. Seward's amendment was rejected, and the question was taken from the committee of the whole and reported to the Senate. Mr. Clay said he hoped the Senate would not agree to Mr. Pearce's amendment, though reported from the committee. He made an earnest appeal to his Southern friends to support the bill. As this was one of a series of compromise measures, and as the others had passed by Northern aid, concerning this, on which their friends of the free States were sensitive. and solicitous, he contended that they should consult their wishes and repay them for their concession. A very able debate ensued. Mr. Hale pointed out the cruel provisions of Mr. Pearce's amendment, and maintained that any person might be convicted and sent to the penitentiary for not less than two years for reading to his slave the Declaration of Independence, or the simple account of the advent of Him who came to preach deliverance to the captives and the opening of prison-doors to them who are bound. Mr. Badger replied, admitting and vindicating the fact that such a person might be convicted for reading to his slave the Declaration of Independence. Mr. Ewing strongly opposed the amendment. He averred that his judgment revolted against it, that it was wrong, that it offended the moral sense of men who looked upon it without any personal interest. Mr. Mason asserted that this discussion had about convinced him that the North was not willing to carry out in good faith the necessary regulations which slavery required, and that the incompatibility between the two sections was too great to allow them to live together under a common government. The question finally reached a vote, and the amendments were rejected by the small majority of four. The question was then taken on the engrossment of the bill; and on the 16th of September, 1850, it was carried by a vote of thirty-two to nineteen. The bill was reported to the House on the 17th. Mr. Brown of Mississippi offered the Pearce amendment, but it was rejected by forty-one majority, and the bill was passed by a majority of sixty-five, a number of Northern Whigs dodging the vote. Thaddeus Stevens immediately arose and gravely made the suggestion, the grim humor of which spoke volumes. of unwritten yet most unwelcome history, that the Speaker send one of his pages to inform those members that they could return with safety, as the slavery question had been disposed of. The measures which were to heal the "five gaping wounds" of the country had now been adopted. The compromisers had achieved a complete victory, and the champions of the Slave Power thought they had settled for years the disturbing questions growing out of the interests and necessities of slavery. They were exultant over victories already won, and looked forward with augmented confidence to other triumphs yet to be achieved. Though defeated, the representatives of the antislavery sentiment of the country were not disheartened. Overborne indeed by numbers then, they knew such questions were never settled until they were settled right. Reason and conscience told them that the forces of the material and moral world were acting with them, and would still fight the battles of truth and freedom, whoever might falter or fail. They turned trustfully to the future, and committed the sacred cause to the sober second thought" of the people and to the providence of God. 66 Mr. Hale in the Senate and Mr. Julian in the House, the Free Soil candidates for President and Vice-President two years thereafter, gave expression to this sentiment and purpose. Toward the close of the conflict, Mr. Hale, alluding to the fact that there had never been a Congress in which the influence of slavery had been more potent, said: "Gentlemen flatter themselves that they have done a great deal for the peace of the country. Everybody is pleased but a few wild fanatics. Let not gentlemen deceive themselves. The pen of inspiration teaches us that there was a time when a set of men cried, 'Peace, peace, when there was no peace.' Let me tell you, there is no peace to them who think they have successfully dug the grave in which the hopes, the rights, and the interests of freedom are buried. No, sir; that peace will be short, and that rejoicing will most assuredly be turned into mourning." On the eve of the adjournment, Mr. Julian spoke at length and with much force of thought and strength of expression on the "healing measures of the present session," and gave his reasons for opposing them. Of the Texas boundary bill he said: "It is neither more nor less than the extension of slavery by an act of Congress." Alluding to the threat of war as the probable consequence of not voting for the measure, he replied: "I stand opposed to the war spirit and the war mania; and yet there are things more to be dreaded than war, the betrayal of sacred trusts, shrinking from just responsibility, a pusillanimous surrender of rights, the extension of slavery by the Federal government,—and, more specific, it is less to be deplored than the dastardly and craven spirit which would prompt the representatives of twenty millions of people to cower and turn pale at the bandit treaty of slaveholders, and give them millions of acres and millions of gold as a peace-offering to the vandal spirit of slaveholding aggression." He declared, in reply to the charge that the "Wilmot proviso was conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity," that it was rather conceived in the brains of such patriots as Henry Vane and Algernon Sydney, and brought forth in the glorious fruits of the Revolution of 1776. "If I thought," he said, " with some, that, for other reasons, slav ery could not gain a foothold in our Territories, I would still insist on the proviso as a wholesome and needful reassertion, in the present crisis, of the principles on which our government was founded." He paid special attention to the Fugitive Slave Act, and seldom has that abhorrent law been more fitly characterized. Comparing it with the act of 1793 he said: "A tissue of more heartless and cold-blooded enactments never disgraced a civilized people, throwing around the slaveholder every protection, as if the institution had the stamp of divinity, while it so hedges about the way of the poor fugitive with nets and snares as to leave him utterly without hope. And "these," he said, "are the fruits of this unparalleled and protracted struggle, brought forth after a congressional incubation of nine months. These are the healing measures which are to dry up the gaping wounds' that have threatened to bleed the nation to death. On the contrary, the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act will open a fresh wound in the North, and it will continue to bleed as long as the law stands unrepealed." CHAPTER XXV. FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT IN THE COUNTRY. General consternation. · - First case. Meetings of colored people. - - Public meetings. Wilson at Lowell. Adams at Boston. Summer in Faneuil Hall. - Burlingame at Northampton. Meetings of religious bodies. — Utterances of clergymen. - Furness, Stone, Beecher, Cheever. -Aid and protection extended. The act defended. - Concerted measures for its vindication and Mr. Webster. Mr. Clay. support. Berrien. -Union-saving meetings. Buchanan, Clayton, Benton, and Castle Garden and Faneuil Hall. - Cler ical defences. Dewey, Taylor, Spencer. THE passage of the Fugitive Slave Act was the signal for a general commotion throughout the land. It involved both a wrong and a peril that menaced, if they did not actually reach, every individual in the Republic. Its uplifted hand was directed first against the fugitives, of whom it was estimated that there were more than twenty thousand in the free States. Nor was the full force of the blow expended on them alone; for beside them there were large numbers of free persons with whom these fugitives had intermarried, and to whom they were joined in the various relations of social and religious life. Its arbitrary and summary provisions, in the hands of base and unscrupulous men, impelled by greed of gain and love of revenge, struck terror upon the whole colored population and their sympathizing friends. These were base and brutal men at hand, willing to become agents of slaveholders in both following those recently escaped and in ferreting out those who had for a longer time eluded the search of the pursuer. Nor were they slow to act. Only eight days after the passage of the law, one of these agents appeared in New York, armed with the power of attorney from Mary Brown of Baltimore, and a certified copy of |