CHAPTER LV

THE BREAKDOWN OF COMPROMISE

631. It has been fitly said that the Union was maintained from 1789 to 1820 by the compromises in the Constitution, and from 1820 to 1861 by Congressional compromises. Political leaders and the mass of the people were desperately anxious to convince themselves that the Compromise of 1850 was final. Any further discussion of slavery was severely reprobated by many Northern men. But, exclaimed James Russell Lowell, "To tell us that we ought not to agitate the question of slavery, when it is that which is forever agitating us, is like telling a man with the ague to stop shaking and he will be cured." The Fugitive Slave Law kept men thinking about slavery. That law was the great mistake of the Slave Power. Had the South been content to lose a few slaves who escaped into free States,1 the compromise might have endured years longer.

Your Coninto a crime;

In his "Higher Law" speech, Seward had warned the South: "You are entitled to no more stringent laws, and such laws would be useless. The cause of the inefficiency of the present statute is not at all the leniency of its provisions: it is the public sentiment of the North. stitution and laws convert hospitality to the refugee but all mankind except you esteem that hospitality a virtue." And Emerson called the law “a law which every one of you will break on the earliest occasion - a law which no man can obey, or abet, without loss of self-respect and forfeiture of the name of gentleman."

632. The law could be applied to Negroes who had been living for years in the North in supposed safety since the breakdown of the law of 1793 (§ 384). Thousands abandoned

1 From 1830 to 1860 the number averaged not more than 1000 a year. A small insurance would have protected the owners.

their homes for hurried flight to Canada; and some were actually seized by slave hunters. More attempts to recapture fugitive slaves took place in 1851 than in all our history before. But now every seizure caused a tumult - if not a riot. Even

PROCLAMATION!!

TO ALL

THE GOOD PEOPLE OF MASSACHUSETTS!

Be it known that there are now

THREE SLAVE-HUNTERS OR KIDNAPPERS

IN BOSTON

Looking for their prey. One of them is called
"DAVIS."

He is an unusually ill-looking fellow, about five feet eight inches high,
wide-shouldered. He has a big mouth, black hair, and a good deal of dirty
bushy hair on the lower part of his face. He has a Roman nose; one of his
eyes has been knocked out. He looks like a Pirate, and knows how to be
a Stealer of Men.

The next is called

EDWARD BARRETT.

He is about five feet six inches high, thin and lank, is apparently about
thirty years old. His nose turns up a little. He has a long mouth, long
thin ears, and dark eyes. His hair is dark, and he has a bunch of fur on
his chin.
He wears his shirt collar turned down, and has a black

string -not of hemp - about his neck.

The third ruffian is named

ROBERT M. BACON, alias JOHN D. BACON.

He is about fifty years old, five feet and a half high. He has a red,
intemperate-looking face, and a retreating forehead. His hair is dark, and
a little gray. He wears a black coat, mixed pants, and a purplish vest. He
looks sleepy, and yet malicious.

Given at Boston, this 4th day of April, in the year of our Lord, 1851, and
of the Independence of the United States the eighty-fourth.

God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts!

A HANDBILL OF 1851, GIVEN IN RHODES, I, 212.

(Notice that it parodies the form of advertisements for escaped slaves.)

"proslavery" men in the North could not stand for the hunting of slaves at their own doors. Legislatures refused to United States officials the use of State jails, forbade State officers to aid in executing the law, and enacted various "personal-liberty

§ 633]

SLAVE HUNTING IN THE NORTH

529

laws," to secure to any man seized as an escaped slave those rights of jury trial and legal privilege which the Federal law denied him. Some of these State laws amounted to downright Nullification.1 The " Underground Railroad" 2 was extended. In several cases, fugitives were rescued from the officers in full day by "mobs" of such high-minded gentlemen as Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Samuel J. May, and Gerrit Smith. These men sometimes avowed their deed in the public press, and challenged prosecution; and all attempts to punish broke down, because no jury would convict. When a slave was returned, the recapture usually proved to have cost the master more than the man could be sold for.

In February, 1851, a mob of Negroes rescued a fugitive out of the hands of Federal officers in Boston and carried him in triumph through applauding streets, where, fifteen years before, Garrison had been dragged in ignominy by a White mob. And when the slave Burns was sent back to slavery, after bloody riots, and a cost to the government of $100,000, it took 1100 soldiers and a battalion of artillery to convey him through those streets which were all draped in mourning.

633. Still, in the campaign of 1852, the platforms of both the leading parties indorsed the "Compromise" emphatically,3 with express reference also to the Fugitive Slave provision; and

1 The Wisconsin legislative resolutions of 1859 used the words of the old Kentucky Resolutions of 1799.

2 An arrangement among Abolitionists in the Border States for concealing fugitives and forwarding them to Canada. The system had its "stations," 'junctions," ," "conductors," and so on.

3 The tendency among respectable classes at the North to cling to the Compromise was especially notable in the Eastern colleges, - where there were many students from the South. Andrew D. White says that in the Yale of the early fifties (when he was a student there), "the great majority of older professors spoke at public meetings in favor of proslavery compromises," though, except for a few theological doctrinaires," their personal sympathies were against slavery. The two great Yale professors of the day who opposed the Fugitive Slave Law, he adds, were generally condemned for 'hurting Yale,' and driving away Southern students. White is a distinguished scholar, author, and diplomat, - the first President of Cornell University and in later years Minister to Russia and Ambassador to Germany and a United States representative at the First Hague Conference.

when Charles Sumner in the Senate moved the repeal of that law, he found only three votes to support him. In the presidential election, too, the Free Soil vote ("Free Democracy," now) fell off a half; and General Scott, the Whig candidate, who was believed to be more liberal than his platform, was easily defeated by Franklin Pierce, who gave the Compromise his hearty support.

One feature of the election of 1852 was the prominence of a new political party which called itself the American party, but which is better known by the appellation of Know-nothings. From the time of the Philadelphia Convention, bitter attempts had been made now and again to limit the political influence of foreign immigrants. To this "native” prejudice there was added, after the Irish immigration of the late forties, a silly fear of "Catholic" domination. The new party was a secret society, with intricate ramifications and elaborate hierarchy. Its purpose was to exclude from office all but native-born and all not in sympathy with this program ; but members below the highest grade of officials were pledged to passive obedience to orders, and were instructed, when questioned as to party secrets, to reply, "I know nothing." The movement was bigoted in character and un-American in methods; but it gained considerable strength in eastern and southern States, and elected several congressmen. In part, the movement drew its strength from the desire to ignore slavery and find new issues.

634. What slim chance there was that the North might quiet down under the iniquity of the Fugitive Slave Law was finally dissipated by another audacious measure in the interests of slavery. The vast region from Missouri and Iowa to the Rockies was known as the Platte country. Immigrants to California were pouring across it; and at the assembling of Congress in December, 1853, Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, strove to secure a Territorial organization for the region. But his KansasNebraska Bill proposed that two new Territories there should be placed on the squatter-sovereignty basis as to slavery.

Douglas and President Pierce put forward the surprising claim that the Compromise of 1850 implied this form of organization for all Territories thereafter formed. But this