cited, flung its shield, for security, over such property as is in controversy in the present case, and the right to pursue and reclaim it in another State." To show that the nation did not regard it as a mere barren right, not far from the same time the United States Marshal for the District of Columbia advertised for sale, in the city of Washington, two colored women, one sixty and the other twenty years of age, to satisfy a judgment rendered against a citizen by the PostOffice Department; and these women were sold, and the money was put into the treasury of the nation. With bondmen fleeing and slaveholders pursuing, with the Supreme Court proclaiming the doctrine of property in man, with women sold by the government itself, on the auctionblock, with the army fighting on foreign soil for conquest in slavery's behalf, with statesmen striving to desecrate free territory with the blot and blight of oppression, thoughtful men began to realize more fully the condition of their country, and of themselves as well, and to comprehend more clearly the responsibilities and duties of the crisis which seemed so rapidly approaching. WORK. THOMPSON. Essential violence of slavery. - Escape of slaves. Workings of Underground Railroad. Characteristics of Western society. Heroic endurance of the fugitives. Sacrifices of their friends. - Van Dorn, Coffin, Rundell Palmer. Noble conduct of Palmer's daughter. — Imprisonment of Burr, Work, and Thompson. Their fidelity and Christian bravery. — Released. VIOLENCE was the essential element of slavery. From the first slave-hunt in Africa to the surrender of the Rebel army at Appomatox, whenever and wherever its influence was felt, violence was the law of its being. It laid its ruthless hand. not only upon the bodies and souls of the slaves, but upon the finer sensibilities and moral convictions of the nation. It trifled with the tenderest feelings, scorned all scruples of conscience, and trampled upon the law of God. To hold a slave. was a direct and defiant challenge to the manhood, the patriotism, and the conscience of the individual, the community, and the nation. Nor was it any less it was, indeed, greater because men consented thereto, became reconciled to it, defended it, and even lent their aid to its support; for then it had accomplished its fatal work, and had destroyed what it had at first outraged and debauched. This "constant warfare," as Jefferson, himself a slaveholder, characterized the relation of master and slave, involved all this without any of the accessories of cruelty or excessive ill treatment. No word ' need be spoken, no blow struck. How much more when the petty tyrant of the lash used harshly his power, and the slave, thus abused and seeking relief in escape, invoked the aid of others in his flight toward the north star and liberty. Then the whole soul of the true man revolted against such barbarism, and rose in mutiny against the laws which sanctioned and sustained it. Frederick Douglass, standing on the shores of the Chesapeake, and looking wistfully after the white sails which were bearing his heart away but were forbidden to take his body, was hardly more restive under the tyranny which bound him to the hated spot than were thousands who were hampered and held back by law from giving him and such as he their helping hand and hearty God-speed. Charles T. Torrey dying in a Baltimore prison, Anthony Burns marching down State Street between files of soldiers to a United States vessel in the stream, and the story of Eliza in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," were but representative facts. They revealed a state of affairs, and purposes resulting therefrom, on which rested what became an important institution, as it was but the necessary and natural consequence of what could not but exist and must reveal itself. It betokened, on the one hand, the imperious desire of the slave to escape from such horrible bondage; and on the other revealed the equally natural wish of others to aid him in that escape. Both were but developments of principles which lie embedded in the human constitution; both arose in obedience to higher laws than any of human enactment. Additional and auxiliary causes greatly increased and intensified these natural influences, and prompted to both the attempted escapes and the proffered aid in making them. In the settlement of the Western States a very large per cent of their earlier emigration was from the South. Being generally the "poor whites," and leaving mainly on account of slavery and the hindrances it interposed in the way of their success in life, these emigrants, strangely enough, took with them their Southern prejudices, and became in their new homes the willing instruments of the same power of which they had been the victims before their removal. At least, this was true of the large majority. A small minority, mostly ministers and members of churches, had left the South from moral considerations, because they were opposed to slavery from principle; and they remained in their new homes no less hostile than before. This hostility was strengthened by the large New England element with which they came in contact; by antislavery discussions, which were so rife in those days; and by the aggravated instances of encroachment and outrage which were from time to time revealing the violent and aggressive character of the system. In addition to the occasional escapes across Mason and Dixon's line into contiguous portions of the free States, where, for obvious reasons, the fugitives were specially liable to arrest, soon after the war of 1812 they began to find their way towards Canada. Many of the soldiers of that war, on their return to Virginia and Kentucky, carried back the welcome intelligence that there was a land of freedom towards the north star. Many of the slaves, catching at these vague items of information, made them the basis of plans of escape which, in entire ignorance of the distance and dangers of the way, but with the marvellous faith for which that race is so remarkable, they proceeded to put into execution. Many such, as early as 1815, began to find their way across the Western Reserve, where they were pretty sure to find a cheerful welcome, a hearty God-speed, and the needful aid and directions. Elizur Wright, Jr., whose childhood was spent there, says of them, that they were remarkable for their desire to pay in labor for what they received, and thus "awakened a feeling in the white settlers very different from that which had been indulged towards the lazy mendicant Indians, whose faces had been too familiar before the war." Among those whose houses were always open to the fugitive were the best and leading men of that New England of the West, such men as Leicester King, Elizur Wright, General Perkins, John Sloane of Ravenna, afterward member of Congress; David Hudson, from whom the town of Hudson received its name, a Revolutionary veteran; and Owen Brown, father of the immortal John Brown, who thus early imbibed his love of freedom, and took his first lessons in practical emancipation. - Illinois, having not only its southern but largely its western boundaries bordering upon the slave States, early and largely participated in the same work. The expulsion from Missouri of Dr. Nelson, one of the ablest, most popular, and most useful of its ministers, for entertaining antislavery views, by ruffians armed with rifles, who compelled him to betake him self, like a fugitive slave, to the woods, from which he could escape only by stealth into Illinois; what was tantamount to the expulsion of Lovejoy from the same State for the same cause, and his subsequent murder at Alton; the arrest, trial, conviction, and long imprisonment of Thompson, Burr, and Work, for no other crime than that of attempting to aid two fugitive slaves to escape from bondage; these cruel and tragic events filled the public mind with alarm, fixed attention, and pressed home upon all the most pregnant questions, not only of duty and humanity, but of patriotism and personal safety. These facts provoked discussion, led to the organization of societies, and to the putting in motion of the general machinery of means to affect the public mind and purpose. These discussions at the North provoked counter-discussions at the South, of which the slaves were often unbidden hearers. True, they comprehended but vaguely their full import, but they gathered their drift. They learned that there was a land of freedom, such a thing as escape, that many had effected it, that there were those who rendered aid, and that the north star pointed out the way to those friends and to that freedom. The consequence was that the numbers who sought such escapes increased, and that many, every year, gained the eagerly sought boon. But they could not effect their escape alone and unaided. This exigency, however, was provided for. The discussions which had reached their ears raised up friends at the North, who were willing to render the needed aid and to share in the risks they were compelled to run. The Underground Railroad was the popular designation given to those systematic and co-operative efforts which were made by the friends of the fleeing slave to aid him in eluding the pursuit of the slavehunters, who were generally on his track. This "institution," as it was familiarly called, played an important part in the great drama of slavery and antislavery. By its timely and effective aid thousands were enabled to escape from the prisonhouse of bondage, and to elude the clutches of merciless slavecatchers, pressing after them with hot haste and often with bitter exasperation. They who belonged to it, who guided and |