vessel, was taken on board, and secured with the rest of the blacks, and they were taken into New London, Connecticut.

The schooner proved to be the Amistad, Captain Ramon Ferrer, from Havana, bound to Principe, about one hundred leagues distant, with fifty-four negroes held as slaves, and two passengers. The Spaniards said, that after being out four days, the negroes rose in the night and killed the captain and a mulatto cook; that the helmsman and another sailor took to the boat and went on shore; that the only two whites remaining were the said passengers, Montez and Ruiz, who were confined below until morning; that Montez the elder, who had been a sea-captain, was required to steer the ship for Africa; that he steered easterly in the day-time, because the negroes could tell his course by the sun, but put the vessel about in the night. They boxed about some days in the Bahama Channel, and were several times near the Islands, but the negroes would not allow her to enter any port. Once they were near Long Island, but then put out to sca again, the Spaniards all the while hoping they might fall in with some ship of war that would rescue them from their awkward situation. One of the Spaniards testified that when the rising took place, he was awaked by the noise, and that he heard the captain order the cabin boy to get some bread and throw it to the negroes, in hope to pacify them. Cinque, however, the leader of the revolt, leaped on deck, seized a capstan bar, and attacked the captain, whom he killed at a single blow, and took charge of the vessel; his authority being acknowledged by his companions, who knew him as a prince in his native land.

After a long litigation in the courts, the slaves were liberated and sent back to their native land.

In the following year, 1840, the brig Creole, laden with slaves, sailed from Richmond, bound for New Orleans; the slaves mutinied, took the vessel, and carried her into the British West Indies, and thereby became free. The hero on this occasion was Madison Washington.

CHAPTER XL..

THE IRON AGE.

THE resolute and determined purpose of the Southerners to make the institution of slavery national, and the equally powerful growing public sentiment at the North to make freedom universal, showed plainly that the nation was fast approaching a crisis on this absorbing question. In Congress, men were compelled to take either the one or the other side, and the debates became more fiery, as the subject progressed.

John P. Hale led in the Senate, while Joshua R. Giddings was the acknowledged leader in the House of Representatives in behalf of freedom. On the part of slavery, the leadership in the Senate lay between Foot of Mississippi, and McDuffie of South Carolina; while Henry A. Wise, followed by a ravenous pack watched over the interest of the "peculiar institution" in the House.

The early adoption of the famous "Gag Law," whereby all petitions on the subject of slavery were to be "tabled" without discussion, instead of helping the Southern cause, brought its abettors into contempt.

In the House, Mr. Giddings was censured for offering resolutions in regard to the capture of the brig Creole.

Mr. Giddings resigned, went home, was at once reelected, and returned to Congress to renew the contest. An attempt to expel John Quincy Adams, for presenting a petition from a number of persons held in slavery, was a failure, and from which the friends of the negro took fresh courage.

In the South, the Legislatures were enacting laws abridging the freedom of speech and of the press, and making it more difficult for Northerners to travel in the slave states. Rev. Charles T. Torry was in the Maryland Penitentiary for aiding slaves to escape, and Jonathan Walker had been branded with a red-hot iron, and sent home for the same offence. The. free colored people of the South were being persecuted in a manner hitherto unknown in that section. Amid all these scenes, there was a moral contest going on at the North. The Garrison abolitionists, whose headquarters were in Boston, were at work with a zeal which has scarcely ever been equalled by any association of men and women.

"The Liberator," Mr. Garrison's own paper, led the vanguard; while the "National Anti-slavery Standard," edited at times by Oliver Johnson, Lydia Maria Child, David Lee Child, and Sydney Howard Gay, gave no uncertain sound on the slavery question.

The ladies connected with this society, headed by Maria Weston Chapman, held an annual fair, and raised funds for the prosecution of the work of changing public sentiment, and otherwise aiding the anti-slavery movement. Lecturing agents were kept in the field the year round, or as far as their means would permit.

A few clergymen had already taken ground against the blood-stained sin, and were singled out by both pulpit and press, as marks for their poisoned arrows. The ablest and most ultra of these, was Theodore Parker, the singularly gifted and truly eloquent preacher of the 28th Congregational Society of Boston. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, though younger and later in the cause, was equally true, and was amongst the first to invite anti-slavery lecturers to his pulpit. The writer of this, a negro, at his invitation occupied his desk at Newburyport, when it cost something to be an abolitionist.

Brave men of other denominations, in different sections of the country, were fast taking their stand with the friends of the slave.

The battle in Congress was raging hotter and hotter. The Florida war, the admission of Texas, and the war against Mexico, had given the slaveholders a bold front, and they wielded the political lash without the least mercy or discretion upon all who offended them. Greater protection for slave property in the free states was demanded by those who saw their human chattels escaping.

The law of 1793, for the recapture of fugitive slaves, was now insufficient for the great change in public opinion, and another code was asked for by the South. On the 18th of September, 1850, the Fugitive Slave Bill was passed, and became the law of the land.

This was justly condemned by good men of all countries, as the most atrocious enactment ever passed by any legislative body. The four hundred thousand free colored residents in the non slave-holding states,