Chapter II

, pp. 21, 22.

[878] _Annals of Congress_, Sixteenth Congress, First Session, pp. 1469, 1587. McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, p. 23. It will be remembered that according to the compromise Missouri was to be admitted into the Union as a slave state, while slavery was to be prohibited in all other territory gained from France north of 36 degrees 30 minutes. See Appendix A, p. 361.

But of what utility were such provisions unless they could be carried into effect? Immediately after the Missouri Compromise became a law, propositions for new fugitive slave acts were again offered in both the House and the Senate.[879] A later attempt was made in the winter of 1821-1822, when another resolution of the Maryland legislature similar to the one mentioned above was presented. These efforts, like the earlier ones, failed to secure the desired legislation.[880]

[879] _House Journal_, Sixteenth Congress, First Session, p. 427.

[880] _Senate Journal_, Sixteenth Congress, First Session, pp. 319, 326; _Annals of Congress_, p. 618; _House Journal_, Seventeenth Congress, First Session, p. 143; _Annals of Congress_, pp. 553, 558, 710. _Annals of Congress_, Seventeenth Congress, First Session, pp. 1379, 1415, 1444; Benton, _Abridgment of the Debates of Congress_, Vol. VI, p. 296; McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, pp. 23, 24.

The last petition of Maryland to Congress for the redress of her grievance due to the underground operations of anti-slavery Pennsylvanians was made December 17, 1821. The month of January of the same year had witnessed the presentation in Congress of a resolution from the general assembly of Kentucky, protesting against Canada's admission of fugitives to her domain, and requesting negotiation with Great Britain on the subject. In 1826, during the administration of John Quincy Adams, negotiations were at length opened. Henry Clay, then Secretary of State, instructed Mr. Gallatin, the American Minister at the Court of St. James, to propose an agreement between the two countries providing for "mutual surrender of all persons held to service or labor, under the laws of either party, who escape into the territory of the other." His purpose in urging such a stipulation was, he declared, "to provide for a growing evil which has produced some, and if it be not shortly checked, is likely to produce much more irritation." He also stated that Virginia and Kentucky were particularly anxious that an understanding should be reached.

In February, 1827, Mr. Clay again communicated with Mr. Gallatin on the subject, being led to do so by another appeal made to the general government by the legislature of Kentucky. At this time he mentioned the fact that a provision for the restoration of fugitive slaves had been inserted in the treaty recently concluded with the United Mexican States, a treaty, it should be added, that failed of confirmation by the Mexican Senate. About five months later the American Minister sent word to the Secretary of State that the English authorities had decided that "It was utterly impossible for them to agree to a stipulation for the surrender of fugitive slaves," and this decision was reaffirmed in September, 1827.

The positive terms in which this conclusion was announced by the representative of the British government might have been accepted as final at this time had not further consideration of the question been demanded by the House of Representatives. On May 10, 1828, that body adopted a resolution "requesting the President to open a negotiation with the British government in the view to obtain an arrangement whereby fugitive slaves, who have taken refuge in the Canadian provinces of that government, may be surrendered by the functionaries thereof to their masters, upon their making satisfactory proof of their ownership of said slaves." This resolution was promptly transmitted to Mr. Barbour, the new Minister, with the explanation before made to Gallatin, that the evil at which it was directed was a growing one, well calculated to disturb "the good neighborhood" that the United States desired to maintain with the adjacent British provinces. But as in the case of the former attempts to secure the extradition of the refugee settlers in Canada, so also in this, the advances of the American government were met by the persistent refusal of Great Britain to make a satisfactory answer.[881]

[881] Niles' _Weekly Register_, Vol. XXXV, pp. 289-291; S. G. Howe, _The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West_, pp. 12-14; William Goodell, _Slavery and Anti-Slavery_, p. 264; M. G. McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, p. 25.

The agitation in Congress for a more effective fugitive slave law, and the diplomatic negotiations for the recovery of runaways from Canadian soil, which have been recounted in the preceding pages, must be regarded as furnishing evidence of the existence in many localities in the free states of a strong practical anti-slavery sentiment. This evidence is reënforced by the facts presented in the earlier chapters of this volume. The escape of slaves from their masters into the free states and their simple but impressive appeals for liberty were phenomena witnessed again and again by many Northern people during the opening as well as the later decades of the nineteenth century; and deepened the conviction in their minds that slavery was wrong. Thus for years the runaway slave was a missionary in the cause of freedom, especially in the rapidly settling Western states. His heroic pilgrimage, undertaken under the greatest difficulties, was calculated to excite active interest in his behalf. Persons living along the border of the slave states, whose sympathies were stirred to action by their personal knowledge of the hardships of slavery, became the promoters of lines of Underground Railroad, sending or taking fugitives northward to friends they could trust. It was not an infrequent occurrence that intimate neighbors were called in to hear the thrilling tales of escape related in the picturesque and fervid language of negroes that valued liberty more than life. The writer, who has heard some of these stories from the lips of surviving refugees in Canada, can well understand the effect they must have produced upon the minds of the spectators. Many children got their lasting impression of slavery from the things they saw and heard in homes that were stations on the Underground Road. John Brown was reared in such a home. His father, Owen Brown, was among the earliest settlers of the Western Reserve in Ohio that are known to have harbored fugitives, and the son followed the father's example in keeping open house for runaway slaves.[882] As early as 1815 many blacks began to find their way across the Reserve,[883] and it is stated that even before this year more than a thousand fugitives had been assisted on their way to Canada by a few anti-slavery people of Brown County in southwestern Ohio.[884] It is probable that numerous escapes were also being made thus early through other settled regions. The cause for this early exodus is not far to seek. The increase of the domestic slave-trade from the northern belt of slaveholding states to the extreme South, due to the profitableness of cotton-raising, and stimulated by the prohibition of the foreign slave-trade in 1807, aroused slaves to flight in order to avoid being sold to unknown masters in remote regions. The slight knowledge they needed to guide them in a northerly course was easily obtainable through the rumors about Canada everywhere current during the War of 1812.[885] The noticeable political effects of the straggling migration that began under these circumstances is seen in the renewed agitation by Southern members of Congress during the years 1817 to 1822 for a more stringent Fugitive Slave Law, and the negotiations with England several years later looking toward the restoration to the South of runaways who had found freedom and security on Canadian soil.

[882] Chapter II , p. 37.

[883] _Ibid._, pp. 37, 38.

[884] William Birney, _James G. Birney and His Times_, p. 435.

[885]