acumen an organic national unity, and evoking in its defense a grander and mightier sentiment. No American of the first half of this century did so much to root the love of the Union in the minds and hearts of the people as did Webster. It was that love, more than hostility to slavery, which animated the North in the war which established the Union and destroyed slavery. Webster failed to measure the evil of slavery, and the Abolitionists failed no less to measure the evil of disunion. Each of them was devoted to one great idea; and the two ideas, which conflicted for a while, were destined to blend at last into a harmonious and irresistible force. The highest distinction of the radical anti-slavery men was that they gave disinterested service, in which they had generally nothing to gain and much to lose; while in the forces which opposed them patriotism had its allies in the ambition of politicians, the timidity of churches, and the selfishness of commerce.

VOL. I.-6

THE

CHAPTER XI.

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW.

HE Compromise of 1850, inasmuch as it did somehow put an end to the immediate open questions regarding slavery, was accepted by the country with singular unanimity. Two years later, the only party which sought to reopen any of its conclusions - the Freesoil cast only about 156,000 votes in a total of over 3,000,000. In this acceptance, the Republican was in entire harmony with the general drift, and with the Whig party. Upon the adjournment of Congress, it said, October 1, 1850:

"The measures which have at last been carried form a new era in our history. Time alone can develop the beneficence and efficiency of their operations. They have been the best that could be carried to save the Union from dangers which threatened it, and satisfied with this we may only hope they will work out the great and happy results for which they were designed."

And it steadily advocated the observance of all the provisions thus adopted.

Among these provisions there was one which brought the subject of slavery home to the keenest sensibilities of the Northern people, and forced upon them the sharpest dilemma between the obligations of humanity and those

of citizenship. This was the Fugitive Slave law. The constitution expressly required the rendition from the free states of fugitives who had fled from their masters. By an early act of Congress, provision had been made for the execution of this provision by magistrates in the several states. This law had not been often put in operation. Several of the Northern states had recently enacted statutes intended to obstruct its operations. There were demands from the South for more effective measures. A bill for this purpose, by Mr. Mason of Virginia, was incorporated in the Compromise scheme, and enacted. An efficient bill for this object could not be acceptable to the North. The point for which the Whigs contended that the alleged fugitive should be tried by a jury had its only real importance in the unconfessed presumption that Northern juries would decide not according to the facts but according to their sympathies, and so nullify the law. As adopted, the law gave the decision on the master's claim to a United States commissioner. The law went into operation. It roused throughout the North a wide excitement and exasperation. Many thousands of men and women who had braved hardship and peril in their escape from bondage were living in Northern towns and cities. They were a peace. ful, inoffensive class, earning their living by humble labor, in kindly relations with their white neighbors. To every one of these the law came as a deadly menace. Men and women were carried back to bondage from Massachusetts; not by secret kidnappers, but in broad day, with the whole community looking on, with the whole country apprised by telegraph of each step in the rendition, and under the shadow and sanction of the stars and stripes.

To resist was to break the law. To organize resistance was to organize rebellion. The master was in the

exercise of his legal rights. The stipulation which secured to him those rights was one of the mutual concessions through which was made possible the great American republic. If any one may break and resist a law of which he personally disapproves, there is an end of civil government, of social order, of civilization. So argued one party.

Said others: "Not all the laws in the world can justify a direct violation of the sacred obligations of humanity. Human law can no more make such an act right than it can make theft, adultery, murder, right. There is a higher law than that of Congress - it is the law of God. We will aid the fugitive to escape, and if it comes to strife we will side with him rather than his oppressor."

When the bill was under debate, a correspondent, “H.,” wrote to the Republican (June 3, 1850) that the people of the North "will aid in the recapture of the fugitive slaves when they forget the Christian law and become callous to every human sentiment - not before. The fate of Mason's bill, or any other on this subject, is of little practical importance. . . It is much too late to think of enforcing a law so repugnant to the public conscience. Practically and forever this question is settled. Let the slave escape beyond the slave states, and the southern border of the free states, and he will be aided in his escape by every one with whom he meets. And it will be done, not only at the spontaneous prompting of sympathy, but as a sacred duty. No more false pledges should be given to the slave-holders. It is better to tell them honestly: It is so writ in the bond,' but it is morally impossible; we cannot and will not do it! If your human cattle escape, we bid them God-speed in the race for liberty, and we cannot do otherwise as long as we are men."

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?"