lems, and the honest attempt to enlighten any one of these, if it be accompanied with a wide study of the surrounding material, is all we can ask. The actual discovery of new matter can not be made a test of success, unless we desire to limit our students to the narrowest of all fields, the history of our own country.

As to the need of a final examination, oral or otherwise, upon the candidate's general command of historical knowledge, opinions differ. One view is that if the candidate has been frequently examined during his preparation, this is evidence sufficient as regards this part of his fitness for the degree. No man, it is said, can be expected to know everything, and an examination ranging over a very wide field must of necessity be superficial in its testing power. There is in this comment too much of that tendency to speak of academic work as "gotten off" and laid aside, which can not be too greatly deplored. Even though a man had been examined in the earlier stages of his course, the knowledge he had then ought not to have slipped away from him without result; it ought to have been enlightened and enlarged by all his later study, and it is precisely this final condition of his intellectual stock that the special examination for the doctorate is well calculated to reach. If such examination be oral, it may, without injustice, take the widest range and give to the candidate the best of opportunities for telling what he knows, not, be it well understood, of showing the results of a cram, but of giving the orderly product of his thought on his chosen subject. If it be written, the candidate may be allowed such a wide option of questions that the result may to some persons seem even more satisfactory. In no case should such a searching final examination be dispensed with.

An experience of some years in the administration of the doctor's degree leads me to the conclusion that it has a very large part to play in the development of our American scholarship. There are those who despise all academic degrees as fictitious and valueless. Their value must depend wholly upon the strictness with which they are administered. There is no more impressive lesson in our educational experience than that making distinction difficult not only increases its value but actually incites a greater eagerness to get it. The American. youth, easily deceived for a time by educational charlatanry, is yet able to take in this idea with considerable readiness, that whatever costs much is probably worth working for, and,

within reasonable limits, we need not fear to alarm him. He will only make another effort, and eventually, if he has the stuff in him of which scholars are made, he will reach his aim. Let us, in whose hands lies the future of the historical doctorate in America, see to it that our part in this endeavor be not wanting.

IX. THE FIRST FUGITIVE SLAVE CASE OF RECORD IN OHIO.

Ѣ

By HON. WILLIAM HENRY SMITH

OF LAKE FOREST, ILL.

THE FIRST FUGITIVE SLAVE CASE OF RECORD IN OHIO.

By WILLIAM HENRY SMITH.

The immortal sixth article of compact of the ordinance of 1787, chiefly adopted by the votes of the Southern States under the lead of Virginia, undoubtedly reflected the sentiment of the majority of the people. The clause recognizing property in slaves is as mild as language could make it. There is nothing mandatory about it. The escaping fugitive "may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service." In the corresponding clause in the Constitution, then being framed, "shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom service or labor may be due," was substituted, and this language is followed in the act of 1793. But this was construed in the spirit of the milder phrase in its execution for many years; and, indeed, the legislative act admitted of no aggravating process. If these early documents, the acts for the suppression of the slave trade and the compromise measures of 1850, were printed in parallel columns a striking contrast would be presented. The history of the evolution of the power that dominated the destinies of the Republic for over half a century would be displayed on a single page. Prior to 1808 slavery received only a shamefaced recognition on either side of the sectional line. Indeed, I might say 1819, for activity in its propagation was noticeable only after that date. The reason, which is well understood, need not engage our attention. Whatever of antagonism occurred on the border west of the Allegheny Mountains was due to the cupidity of a few, and did not involve the good people of Virginia, Kentucky, and the Northwest.

Among the papers of Governor Samuel Huntington, of Ohio, was found an incomplete account of the first fugitive slave case of record under the act of 1793 that occurred in the territory embraced in the ordinance of 1787. Research in Virginia has