CHAPTER V.

FUGITIVES. KIDNAPPING.

NATIONAL RECOGNITION OF PROPERTY IN MAN.

John Jay.

Domestic slave-trade stimulated. Slaves escaping. -Eastern Pennsylvania. - Active friends of the slave. Case of the Mobile. Before the courts. - Arguments of Jay and White. The slave set at liberty. Brazilian vessel. - Escape of slaves from the Tombs. - Slave case in Boston. Forcible abduction in the harbor. - Meeting in Faneuil Hall. -John Quincy Adams. - Speeches of Sumner, Stephen C. Phillips, Wendell Phillips, Theodore Parker. - Personal liberty laws. — Unfriendly legislation in New Jersey, New York. Opposition to antislavery press. Decision of Supreme Court affirming the right of property in man. slaves.

- Government sale of

THE annexation of the vast slave region of Texas, with soil and climate adapted to the culture of cotton, and the prospective acquisition of Mexican territory, increased the price of and the demand for slaves. The activity of flesh jobbers and land speculators was greatly stimulated, and the domestic slave traffic was largely augmented. The auction-block, the coffle, and the forced separation of families and friends, filled the bondmen, especially of the Border States, with dread. Many of the most intelligent and energetic among them sought liberty in flight. To no section of the land did they flee for succor and safety as they did to Eastern Pennsylvania; nowhere were there so many whose ears were quick to catch the footfall of the weary and fainting fugitive. Not ostentatious in words or deeds, the members of the old Abolition Society of Pennsylvania and of the more modern antislavery societies were faithful and fearless, persistent and painstaking. The city of Philadelphia and the counties of Delaware, Chester, Lancaster, York, and Adams, were studded with the stations of the "Underground Railroad," while faithful men and women stood ready to act as agents and conductors, to help forward the

fleeing chattels; good Samaritans to watch over and care for the weary, famishing, and often wounded victims. Many of these tireless men and women were Quakers, or of Quaker origin; and, though quiet in demeanor, as became their peaceful sect, they for years "stood self-consecrated, enveloped by the love of God, permeated by the love of man," and ready to render aid to the hunted fugitive.

To the judicious counsels and ceaseless labors of such men as Thomas Shipley, Elijah F. Pennypacker, Daniel Gibbons, Bartholomew Furnell, Lindley Coates, Edmund and John Nee !les, James Mott, William H. Furness, Charles D. Cleveland, Robert Purvis, William Still, James Miller McKim, and Edmund M. Davis, in Pennsylvania, and Thomas Garrett and John Hunn, in Delaware, and such women as Esther Moore, Abigail Goodwin, Lucretia Mott, Sarah Pugh, and Mary Grew, of Philadelphia, were thousands of lowly ones indebted for shelter and concealment, food and clothing, means of journeying on, and a hearty God-speed. Seldom have such opportunities of usefulness and self-sacrifice been accorded to men; and seldom, if ever, have they been more nobly and worthily improved than by the antislavery men and women of Eastern Pennsylvania.

There was, too, in the city of New York, that great mart of trade, with its Southern connections, interests, and prejudices against the African race and its friends, a body of earnest, determined, and sagacious antislavery men, who were deeply imbued with a Christian spirit and ready to make sacrifices of time, money, and ease for the good of the slave. Among them was John Jay, a gentleman of ability, culture, social position, and wealth, who inherited not only the name but the sense of justice and the love of liberty of an illustrious ancestry. Being an excellent lawyer, he had made those subjects of his profession in which the rights of man were involved matters of special study. His advice and counsel were, therefore, generally sought by these friends of the fugitive in the prosecution of their philanthropic, but oftentimes difficult and delicate, labors; and they were always cheerfully and freely given.

The office of the "Antislavery Standard," conducted by

Sydney Howard Gay, who entered heartily into the work, was a place of usual resort and conference for members of this devoted band. Mr. Gay was not only an accomplished journalist, subsequently connected with the "Tribune" and the "Post," but at that time an active and efficient agent of the "Underground Railroad."

The frequency of escapes, and the increasing numbers of those who were seeking and effecting them, incensed the slavemasters, and increased their activity and attempts to prevent them. Many were, therefore, arrested in their flight, and remanded to their bondage and chains. In this work the masters of vessels engaged in the Southern trade bore a prominent and generally a dishonorable part, exhibiting far greater anxiety to conciliate and carry out the desires of the slaveholders than to conform to the requirements of the statute. Indeed, so determined and reckless were they in these attempts, that they often incurred the guilt and exposed themselves to the penalties of kidnapping.

Early in Mr. Polk's administration, the brig Mobile, from Savannah, entered the port of New York with George Kirk, a colored man, on board, supposed to be a slave. Not being allowed to go on shore, a writ of habeas corpus was immediately sued out by Judge Edmunds. Going on board the brig, which had been hauled into the stream, the officer demanded the fugitive. The captain demurred, but after a little parley surrendered him. He was in irons, and bore the marks of hard usage. It appeared that he had secreted himself in the vessel, had not been discovered for several days, had confessed to the master that he was a slave and was endeavoring to escape from slavery, and that it was the purpose of the master to retain him in custody until he could return him to Savannah.

He was taken before the court, and John Jay and Joseph L. White appeared as counsel. Mr. Jay addressed the court in a plea replete with legal learning. Mr. White's argument the "Standard" characterized as "one of the most eloquent, logical, in every respect one of the most powerful, speeches ever listened to in a court of justice, or, indeed, anywhere." By the decision of Judge Edmunds the prisoner was discharged

from the custody of the captain. But he had hardly left the room when officers were again put in pursuit, armed with a new process, under a law which gave to the captain of a vessel on board of whose craft a fugitive was found a right to take such fugitive before the mayor. But he had been secreted in the office of the " Antislavery Standard," and could not at once be found. The captain offered a reward of fifty dollars for his recovery; and for this paltry sum the police force of New York, consisting of nine hundred men, was, under the sanction of the law, put on the track of this one trembling black man, who was simply trying to be free. They found him hidden in a box, in which he had been placed for the purpose of escape. A new writ of habeas corpus was sued out, he was brought before the same judge, the law was pronounced unconstitutional, and he was again set at liberty.

In the summer of 1847, a case occurred in which questions of foreign policy as well as domestic slavery arose, the adjustment and answer of which became subjects of protracted discussion. The circumstances were these: A Brazilian ship arrived in the port of New York, having three slaves as a portion of her crew. They were taken before the courts on a writ of habeas corpus. Mr. Jay appeared as their counsel. As they belonged to a foreign vessel, there were points involved which occasioned differences of opinion, as well as conflicting decisions by the different judges. In the mean time they were confined in the Tombs, and their somewhat peculiar case excited public interest, especially among the antislavery men of the city. While it was still pending before the courts, the prisoners mysteriously disappeared from the jail. An investigation shed no light upon the matter, the officials of the prison testifying that everything appeared as usual at the time of the escape, and that they were able to neither give nor find any clew to the strange disappearance of the men. There were those, indeed, who did understand the matter, and who subsequently disclosed the facts connected with the case.

Among those who were interested in the history and fate of these men were Mr. Gay, Elias Smith, and William A. Hall, whose regard for man was not limited by the lines of national

ity, and who felt for the slaves of other lands as for those of their own. By the aid of a man confined in the Tombs for a breach of trust, and who became interested in these persons, the jailer of the prison was intoxicated. While he was sleeping, the key was taken, the doors were opened, and the prisoners were liberated. A carriage was in waiting, and they were placed beyond the reach of the officers. The jailer awoke to find everything apparently secure; but his prisoners had fled. Mr. Jay, the counsel in the case, knew nothing of the mode of escape, nor did Mr. Gay. The judge, after investigation, decided that they could not be given up under the treaty with Brazil.

In August, 1846, a case occurred in Boston involving similar elements of lawless violence, but with less satisfactory results. The brig Ottoman, owned by John H. Pierson and commanded by Captain James W. Hannum, sailed from New Orleans for Boston. When several days at sea, a slave was found secreted in the vessel. The vessel, with the escaped slave on board, arrived early in September in Boston Harbor. Placing the slave on a pilot-boat for safe keeping, the captain went into the city and made arrangements that the bark Niagara, which was soon to sail for New Orleans, should take him back. Having made these arrangements, he went down the harbor, took the fugitive on board his boat, and awaited the arrival of the Niagara. Landing on one of the islands, the negro seized the boat and sailed for South Boston Point. The captain followed him in another boat, and after landing, and chasing the fugitive for two miles, captured him, accused him of theft, and took him by force down the harbor. A storm arising, the Niagara did not go to sea for some days; and thus this man was forcibly held, without law and against law, in the waters of Massachusetts. But the fugitive was at length placed on board the Niagara; and she, eluding the steamer sent down the harbor to rescue this person, thus violently and unlawfully restrained of his liberty and abducted by force from the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth, bore him back to slavery.

This inhuman and lawless proceeding very naturally excited deep indignation. A crowded meeting was held in Faneuil Hall.