4. The abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia.

5. A very strict fugitive slave law which denied to the runaway negro the right of trial by jury, punished anyone who aided a slave to escape or hindered his arrest, and commanded all citizens to help in the return of fugitive slaves if their aid were asked by the officers.

The Compromise of 1850 was a truce, not a real peace between the sections, but it is probable that its passage post

poned secession for ten

years. This delay of the

coming conflict between the free states and the slave states was a decided gain for the cause of the Union. Our country grew very rapidly in population, wealth, and power during the decade between 1850 and 1860. Much the larger part of this gain was in the North. That section was far better able to defend the Union in 1860 than it would have been ten years earlier.

The Fugitive Slave Law. The adoption of the Compromise of 1850

was hailed with joy by

Both parties

accept the a majority of our people, who hoped that it meant the begin- compromise ning of a new era of good feeling in the country. Both of the great political parties proclaimed that all the troublesome questions growing out of slavery were finally settled. In 1852 the Whigs said that they deprecated all further agitation of the slavery question as dangerous to our peace, and the Democrats resolved that they would resist all attempts to renew such agitation in Congress or out of it. In the presidential election of that year the Whigs made General Winfield Scott

The election of 1852

their candidate for the presidency, and the Democrats nominated Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire. Pierce was elected by a large majority and succeeded Fillmore in 1853.

But no great moral issue like the slavery question is ever finally settled until the right has won. Such questions cannot Antislavery be successfully compromised, as our people very soon discovered. From the first the new fugitive slave law met a storm the fugitive of opposition in the North. In all parts of that section the

men

denounce

slave law

Attempts to

rescue

fugitive slaves

Franklin Pierce

antislavery men refused to obey it. A meeting of citizens in Ohio resolved, "That any man who in any way aids in the execution of this law should be regarded as false to God and totally unfit for civilized society." A judge in New York whose duty it was to enforce the fugitive slave law said, "I will trample that law in the dust; and they must find another man, if there be one, who will disgrace himself to do this dirty work." Henry Ward Beecher, the most eloquent preacher of the time, maintained

that returning a fugitive slave "comprises every offense it is possible for one man to commit against another;" and Emerson, one of our greatest men of letters, said in a public meeting, "The fugitive slave law is an act which every one of you will break on the earliest occasion." Sentiments similar to these were heard in every one of the free states.

The actions of the antislavery men spoke even louder than their words. The Underground Railroad did a larger business than ever before. Sometimes runaway slaves were

arrested and carried back into slavery, but in many instances the enforcement of the law was thwarted and in some cases mobs rescued fugitives from their captors. Some of these rescue cases were famous. In 1851 a Maryland slave owner accompanied by a United States officer tried to arrest a runaway slave at Christiana, Pennsylvania. Some of the people in the neighborhood rallied to the defense of the slave, and in the fight which followed, the owner was killed and the fugitive escaped. About the same time a negro named Jerry McHenry was arrested as a fugitive from slavery at Syracuse, New York. That night a mob broke into the court-house in which Jerry was confined, carried him away in triumph, and finally sent him safely to Canada. In 1854 some people in Boston tried to rescue Anthony Burns, a runaway from Virginia who had been arrested in that city, but this time the police were too strong for the mob and, with the aid of a company of militia, Burns was carried back into slavery.

Many northern people who had no desire to interfere with slavery in the South sympathized with the fugitives who had fled from bondage and were trying to reach a land of freedom. Growing The efforts to return these runaways to their masters only feeling against strengthened the growing antislavery sentiment in the free slavery states. In time this feeling became so strong that some of the northern states passed personal liberty laws which made the execution of the fugitive slave law still more difficult, by giving the runaway the help of a lawyer and the right of trial by a jury. The literature which was written in the North during the years when the agitation of the slavery question was dividing the country into two hostile sections played no small part in promoting that movement. Whittier and Lowell poured forth their souls in verses of passionate indignation against slavery. But Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was the most powerful literary force of the antislavery days. This famous literature book was published in 1852, and during the next five years half a million copies of it were sold in the United States. Its northern readers laid it down with an increased hatred of slavery. Few books have ever done more to arouse public opinion. Years of Growth.-While the agitation of the slavery question was the most important movement in our history A period of between 1845 and 1861 we must not think that our people rapid growth

Antislavery