1823.

RENDITION OF FUGITIVE SLAVES.

217

removal; the claimant was required to bring his prisoner before a judge or recorder of a court of record, and heavy fines and long terms of imprisonment were provided for kidnappers.*

The effect of the law was to insure a more careful examination of claimants, and to that extent guard the liberty of free negroes. But no warrant was required for the seizure and arrest, the sympathy of the people was almost always sure to be with the negro seized, and not infrequently that sympathy led to vigorous measures in his behalf and to a rescue. Such instances were constantly occurring. Thus, in 1821, a citizen of Maryland with his overseer, traced a runaway to Kennett Square, a little town in Pennsylvania not far from the Delaware border, where the negro was found. But in the attempt to seize him the people interfered, a struggle followed, and both owner and overseer lost their lives. A year later another Maryland planter in search of a slave went to Darby; but there also the people rose, threatened him with imprisonment as a kidnapper, and compelled him to allow the negro to escape.

These two incidents aroused such excitement in Maryland. that the Legislature was forced to interfere, and address Pennsylvania on the subject. The existence of slavery, the letter set forth, was an evil as deeply regretted by Maryland as it could be by Pennsylvania. Friends of freedom everywhere would rejoice to see it exterminated. But the end of slavery could not be expected for many years to come, and until that time did come such citizens of Maryland as saw fit to own slaves were as much entitled to this as to any other kind of property, and it was the duty of the sister State to protect owners in its enjoyment. But Pennsylvania did not do so, for of all the slaves that each year sought a refuge on her soil very few were brought back to Maryland. Aside from the constitutional obligation to return fugitives from service and labor, it was bad policy for Pennsylvania not to stop the settlement of negroes on her soil. They could never assimilate with the whites, and must always be a burden and a menace. †

*Act of March 27, 1820. The fine might range from $500 to $2,000; with the fine went a term of imprisonment of from seven to twenty-one years.

Journal of the Senate of Pennsylvania, 1822-'23, pp. 232-235. The letter was laid on the table.

No action followed the appeal, and, after enduring what she considered a great injustice for three more years, Maryland renewed her efforts, and sent a commission to visit the Legislatures of Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, remonstrate in her name, and ask for a better enforcement of the fugitive slave law of 1793. The Legislature of New Jersey was not in session; but those of Delaware and Pennsylvania promptly complied with the request and, despite the loud and indignant protests of the antislavery people, enacted laws more in accordance with the wishes of Maryland.* Delaware made it a crime for a runaway slave to come within her bounds; forbade negroes free or slave to leave her soil unless provided with a legal pass, and punished kidnapping with a fine of at least a thousand dollars, with one hour on the pillory, with sixty lashes on the bare back, with imprisonment for not less than three years, and at the end of the term of imprisonment with the sale of the offender as a servant for seven years to the highest bidder. †

#

Pennsylvania now required that the claimant should obtain a warrant for the arrest of the negro, and that the prisoner should be examined before a judge.

All this was in the interest of the free negro. But concessions were also made to the owner seeking his slave. He might obtain his warrant from a justice of the peace or an alderman; he might, when the examination took place before the judge, have the trial postponed and the negro sent to jail until he gathered more evidence, and if any judge, magistrate, or sheriff did not aid him to secure the full benefit of the law a heavy penalty awaited the delinquent official.

In the District of Columbia it might be, indeed it was carried on with impunity. At that time the District consisted of two distinct and separate parts. The one, called the County of

Journal of the Senate of Pennsylvania, 1825-'26. For the opposition in Delaware, see American Daily Advertiser, February 11, 1826. For the debate in the Pennsylvania Legislature and the opposition of the people, see American Daily Advertiser, February 10, 11, 14, 15, 18, 20, 1826.

Laws of Delaware, Chapter CCCLXII, 1826. See also act of January 19, 1826, Chapter CCCXVI.

Laws of Pennsylvania, March 25, 1826.

The warrant might be issued by a judge, justice of the peace, or alderman.

1825.

SLAVERY IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.

219

Alexandria, lay in Virginia, and was subject to such laws as were on the statute-books of Virginia at the time of the cession to the United States. The other, known as the County of Washington, is the present District, is entirely in Maryland, and was subject to such laws as were in force in Maryland in 1790. On the Virginia side of the Potomac no negro could be arrested as a fugitive slave who could produce evidence of freedom. But if such evidence could not be produced within three months after being demanded, he might be arrested and hired out till it was procured, when he must be discharged without costs, and must be given a certificate of freedom to be annually renewed. Should he be unable to secure satisfactory evidence within a year after his arrest, he must be sold as a slave.

On the Maryland side the law was very different. There all free persons of color, whether natives or emigrants, were required to register with the clerk of the County Court and procure a certificate. Negroes found at large without it must be examined before a magistrate. If adjudged runaways they must be sold as slaves. If declared freemen they must be discharged, subject, however, to all the fees, costs, and rewards usual in the case of runaways, and on failure to pay them must be sold into slavery.

Favored by situation and by the laws on the Maryland side, Washington had become a veritable slave mart. To it every week numbers of negroes bought in Maryland and Virginia were carried by the slave-dealers, there to be kept till the coffles were ready to be sent to the plantations of the South. It was the custom to deliver the blacks, immediately after arrival, to the sheriff, who confined them for safe keeping in the public jails; or take them to one of the private prisons, of which there were several in the city. In the public jails they were treated as common malefactors, though guilty of absolutely no offence whatever. In the private prisons, duly provided with cells, fetters, and chains, they were treated with a cruelty that often drove the victims to attempt suicide. When by one means and another a dealer had gathered twenty or more likely young negro men and girls, he would bring them forth from their cells; would

huddle the women and young children into a cart or wagon; would handcuff the men in pairs, the right hand of one to the left hand of another; make the handcuffs fast to a long chain which passed between each pair of slaves, and would start his procession southward.* To many people, both within and without the District, it seemed a shameful thing that the seat of government of a great people, proud of its freedom, enlightenment, and civilization, should be a slave mart; that its prisons should be turned into pens for the safekeeping of wretched beings awaiting shipment to the South, and its streets resound with the tramp of marching coffles of slaves in chains. Yet no serious effort had ever, in the course of thirty years, been made to stop the traffic. Now and then some horrible atrocity, some heartrending story, would arouse attention, and extort an indignant protest from a grand jury, or a public official, or prompt a member of Congress to call for an investigation that never was made. As early in the history of the city as 1802 a grand jury of Alexandria County presented the local slave-trade as a grievance and a disgrace. In 1816 a judge, in his charge to a grand jury of Washington County, declared that "the frequency with which the streets of the city had been crowded with manacled captives, sometimes even on the Sabbath, could not fail to shock the feelings of all humane persons; that such things were repugnant to the spirit of our political institu

*"Scarcely a week passes without some of these wretched creatures being driven through our streets. After having been confined, and sometimes manacled, in a loathsome prison, they are turned out in public view, to take their departure for the South. The children and some of the women are generally crowded into a cart or wagon, while the others follow on foot, not unfrequently handcuffed and chained together."-Alexandria Gazette, June 22, 1827.

A grand jury for the county of Alexandria, in 1802, presented as a nuisance "the practice of persons coming from distant parts of the United States into this District for the purpose of purchasing slaves, where they exhibit to our view a scene of wretchedness and human degradation disgraceful to our characters as citizens of a free government. True it is that these dealers in the persons of our fellow-men collect within this District, from various parts, numbers of these victims of slavery, and lodge them in some place of confinement until they have completed their number. They are then turned out in our streets and exposed to view, loaded with chains, as though they had committed some heinous offence against our laws."

1826. FREE NEGROES IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 221

tions and the rights of men, and calculated to impair public morals by familiarizing the young with scenes of cruelty."

That same year a slave mother, driven to desperation by the thought of separation from all she held dear, flung herself from the window of a private prison and perished in the street below. The whole city for a moment was horrified, and John Randolph called for a committee to "inquire into the existence of an inhuman and illegal traffic in slaves carried on in the District and report what measures were necessary for putting a stop to the same." * The committee reported testimony but no measures,† and a decade passed away before the House was again troubled with the matter. Petitions were presented from time to time praying for the abolition of slavery in the District; but it was not till Charles Miner, of Pennsylvania, became a member that the existence of slavery and the slave-trade in the District was attacked in serious earnest by the introduction of resolutions which the House refused to consider.

The attention which Mr. Miner could not secure in May was easily secured in December by an event of no uncommon occurrence. During the summer of 1826 a negro calling himself Gilbert Horton was found wandering about the wharves of Washington in search of work, was suspected of being a runaway, and was arrested; but he claimed to be free, and named persons in Poughkeepsie who corroborated his statement and secured his release after an imprisonment of twentysix days. Had it not been for the kind-hearted sheriff, who paid the jail fees, the negro must, under the law, have been sold as a slave. Later in the year he was again apprehended, examined, and discharged, the sheriff paying the costs. Though but one of many cases, this of Horton drew attention to the gross injustice of the law, and at the next session of Congress the House Committee for the District of Columbia was instructed to inquire if there really was a law in force which authorized the imprisonment of a free negro and his sale as

* Annals of Congress, Fourteenth Congress, First Session, 1815-'17, pp. 11151117. + Ibid., p. 1465. Journal of the House of Representatives, Nineteenth Congress, First Session,

p. 559.