Ohio History Journal

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW                                         117

Despite the frequent repetition of similar sentiments, the fugitive slave

law, in the Ohio Valley as elsewhere, became the focal point of an extra-

ordinarily complex issue, which held widely different meanings for the

various groups and individuals living in the region. Among those whose

vital interests the law affected were the slaveholders and non-slaveholders

who lived south of the river, the free Negroes and fugitive slaves in Ohio,

and other valley states of the North, the officials of the United States govern-

ment who were pledged to enforce the law, the abolitionists, and leaders

of the various political parties, who had to bear the brunt of the pressures

from all the others involved. The law meant many things to the Americans

of the Ohio Valley and its meaning was largely determined by the vantage

point from which it was viewed.

Those who lived in the slave states south of the Ohio River, like their

fellow countrymen in the North, failed to agree about the nature of the

fugitive slave problem or the wisdom of the law. The majority of runaway

slaves who fled north were from border states, and, although there was no

real danger of a mass exodus of bondsmen, slave owners from those states

did face a practical problem. The proximity of the free states and the

presence of abolitionists appeared to some Kentuckians, for example, to be

the cause of much of their difficulty. "Our slaves, not only singly but in

droves," commented a group of Kentucky slaveholders in 1850, "are pirated

and purloined from us, into other States, and there protected by laws, by

mobs and violence, in violation of the spirit and the letter of the Constitution

of the Union." Henry Clay agreed. "Of all the States in the Union, unless

it be the State of Virginia, the State of which I am a citizen suffers most by

the escape of slaves to adjoining States."³ When South Carolina's Senator

Andrew P. Butler marshaled support for a new fugitive slave law, he

alleged that slave property worth $30,000 was "abstracted from Kentucky

annually, by persons who inveigle the slaves from the borders of Kentucky."

Butler also alluded to the constitutional implications of the question. "It is

an invasion of recognized constitutional rights by those who ought to respect

them," he said.⁴

While there was considerable--though not unanimous--agreement on the

latter point in the South, the exact number of fugitive slaves and the role

of abolitionist encouragement to run away were far from proved. A fugitive

slave, if determined in his flight, was a poor risk and a bad example to

others even when he was recaptured. The market value of those known to

be habitual runaways was very low, and the expense of capturing a slave

was sometimes more than he was worth. Sympathy for fugitive slaves was

118                                                 OHIO HISTORY

not uncommon and some who were slaveholders themselves did not consider

it their business to return other people's Negroes.⁵ It was not the practical

problem of returning fugitive slaves that made the issue so heated but rather

the raising of it to an abstract principle. In the North the fugitive slave law

became a symbol of southern aggression and flouting of civil liberties; in

the South, it became the measure of northern willingness to assume the pro-

tection of that section's basic rights. One southern writer maintained that

it was "as much for the sake of having the right recognized, as of enforcing

it, that impelled the South to make the fugitive slave law a sine qua non of

the Compromise measures." "They insist on the law," wrote a northern

Democrat, "because it is constitutional, because in executing it we give them

assurance that we are willing and able to abide by our constitutional engage-

ments, and are not disposed to abuse the power of the federal government

now passing once for all, into our hands."⁶

As incidents concerning alleged fugitive slaves multiplied, many south-

erners saw in northern opposition to the fugitive slave law clear proof that

their fears were well founded. The North would no longer protect southern

property or southern rights. At times the angry slaveholders called attention

to the value of southern business and threatened economic retaliation if

things did not change. In 1857 a Maysville newspaper commented: "The

constant intermeddling of free negroes and some fanatical white persons

at Cincinnati, . . . with the slave property of the South, is fast giving that

city a reputation that her enterprising merchants will feel in the loss of much

valuable trade." The editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer, too, was very much

aware that the city was "acquiring an unenviable reputation as a depot for

the assemblage and collection of fugitive slaves," a fact which would by no

means increase Cincinnati's popularity with the states to the south. The

"pestiferous abolition agitators and demagogues" damaged the best interests

of the city when they outraged "all the laws of comity and good neighbor-

hood" and also violated a "solemn constitutional compact." The editor was

confident that the majority of citizens in Cincinnati did not approve the

"forays upon the property of their neighbors in Kentucky," and deplored

the thought that they would have to suffer for the acts of a few, which they

entirely disapproved. They would cordially approve vigorous government

efforts to put down the "Negro-Underground-Railroad thieving," he re-

marked, which was such a reproach to their "good name as neighbors and

sister States in a common Union."7

Even in Kentucky, however, there existed sentiments in opposition to the

fugitive slave law, or at least such sentiments existed and were openly ex-

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW                                           119

pressed in 1851. In the spring of that year nine citizens of Lewis County,

representing the non-slaveholding class, objected to a former governor's

statement that Kentuckians would be unanimous in regarding a repeal of

the fugitive slave law as a dissolution of the Union. These citizens denied

that the opinion of some of the state's 31,000 slaveholders could represent

the opinion of 600,000 non-slaveholders. The group resolved that so far as

its members were informed, "intelligent and influential non-slaveholders

regard the Fugitive Slave Bill as unconstitutional and anti-Christian." The

admiration they felt for free institutions convinced them that the North

would remain firm in its purpose to repeal the bill in a legal manner, "and

that it will be as much opposed at the South as at the North when the light

shines as abundantly here as it does there."8

Although opinion north of the Ohio River was also diverse, there was

little disagreement among the colored residents, both fugitive slaves and

free Negroes. To them the law presented a serious threat, and when it was

first passed some felt that they were in imminent danger of enslavement.

The insecurity produced by the new legislation created near panic among

the Negroes of the valley region. Many considered flight to Canada, and

in the fall of 1850 there was a mass exodus of Negroes from Pittsburgh.

A number of small groups left in September, and the Pittsburgh Gazette

commented, "The passage of this law will have the effect of banishing the

great majority of the escaped slaves to the British Possessions, where, at

last, they can look on themselves as freemen, and meet on equal terms those

who before held them in bondage." By early October three hundred had

fled from Pittsburgh and Allegheny City, but the migration gradually slowed

down.⁹ As it became apparent that the fears of the Negroes were not well

founded, they began to use other methods than flight to gain their ends.

One mass meeting of colored citizens passed a resolution urging officials to

resign rather than enforce the fugitive slave law. The Negroes hoped that

no qualified person in Pittsburgh could be found "so far beneath the level

of a gentleman, . . . to act as Slave Catching Commissioner for Southern

nabobs, who despise doing the miserably mean dirty work for themselves."

Some of the colored people went so far as to arm and form militia com-

panies to protect themselves against the dangers posed by the terrifying

law.10

A number of abolitionists believed the hysteria unwarranted. Thomas

Garrett told William Lloyd Garrison that he doubted very much if there

would be more arrested under the new law than under the old, because of

an increase in the number of those who were willing to give shelter and

120                                                  OHIO HISTORY

protection to the fugitives. Another Quaker abolitionist told a Friends

meeting he did not think the Negroes' danger "was much increased" by

the new law and "advised Friends to counsel them to quietness and for-

bearance." The abolitionists of Salem, Ohio, also believed the panic was

unnecessary.11

Subsequent events tended to confirm the correctness of those who pre-

dicted that the 1850 law would add very little insecurity to the lives of

colored people in the North. Only a small number of fugitive slaves were

arrested and returned to slavery under the terms of the 1850 act. The total

for the United States was probably not much more than two hundred, and

about eighteen of those were in the eastern Ohio Valley.12 In addition, there

were several attempted arrests which failed because of the interference of

outsiders and at least two cases in which the alleged fugitives were found

to be free Negroes and released by the authorities. The law, though favor-

able to the slave owner, nevertheless operated on the side of justice on some

occasions where free Negroes were falsely accused as fugitives.

The rendition of fugitive slaves aroused considerable interest and varied

reactions among the citizens of the Ohio Valley. When George Washington

McQuerry, who had lived in Ohio three or four years and had married a

free Negro while there, was arrested as a fugitive in Cincinnati in 1853,

both James G. Birney and John Jollife contested the legality of the proceed-

ings. Justice John McLean heard the legal arguments but declared the law

constitutional and ordered the fugitive returned to his master in Kentucky.13

In 1856 the case of Margaret Garner attracted nationwide attention. She

and seven other fugitives had fled from Kentucky and were arrested by a

United States marshal's party in a house near Cincinnati. The deputies fired

several shots and broke into the house. Upon entering they discovered that

Margaret had killed her ten-year-old daughter to prevent the child's return

to slavery. Because the woman was under arrest as a fugitive slave and

also liable for prosecution for murder by the state, a drawn-out jurisdic-

tional dispute followed. Local abolitionists supported the move to have

Margaret placed under state rather than federal custody, but a United States

judge upheld the doctrine of national supremacy and ordered the fugitives

remanded to Kentucky. Later efforts to have Margaret returned for trial in

Ohio failed, and the Cincinnati Enquirer alleged that the move was really

a ruse to get her out of the South and free her from bondage. Also futile

was a move to prosecute the United States marshal for contempt of court

because he had failed to produce the fugitives when requested by the state

court. The pro-Democratic Enquirer rejoiced when a federal judge upheld

122                                                  OHIO HISTORY

if he worked a life-time for his master." He was satisfied to return to his

old home "and he went, without a murmur."¹⁷

Mason Barbour was an unusually docile fugitive. The possibility of

violent resistance, rescues by groups of free Negroes and abolitionists, and

hampering legal moves probably made those who were hunting fugitive

slaves prefer taking them quickly, by force if necessary, and without the

regular legal procedure. Twice as many fugitives were remanded to slavery

by arbitrary action of slavecatchers or kidnapping as by the regular legal

channels, and the threat from kidnappers was greater than from the law.

While the law provided protection for the free Negro, kidnappers frequently

attempted to force such persons into slavery. Occasionally kidnappers were

discovered and arrested. In 1860 in Cincinnati a white man posing as a

steamboat captain tried to entice a Negro stevedore into a ferryboat, pre-

sumably to take him south. When the intended victim sensed the situation

and began to run, the pretended captain pursued him and proclaimed him

a runaway slave. The free Negro was saved by the intervention of a white

man who recognized him, gave the would-be abductor a severe trouncing,

and had him arrested on a charge of attempted kidnapping.l⁸

The widespread unpopularity of the fugitive slave law in the North prob-

ably did as much as anything to make federal law enforcing officers reluctant

to return slaves under its provisions. The law seemed harsh and unjust,

and many citizens who had little or no sympathy with the abolitionists

resented that part of it which tried to elicit their cooperation in returning

fugitives to southern bondage. The fact that it was a concession to the

South, and was demanded so emphatically by that section, only added to

northern irritation. At least one federal deputy marshal in Ohio resigned

rather than execute the odious law, and even those who supported the law

in principle sometimes objected to certain of its features or the way it was

being enforced.l⁹

The Democratic, pro-compromise Cincinnati Enquirer admitted that the

statute was unjust and urged that some of its worst features be eliminated.

The provision that testimony of one witness could send a Negro into slavery

seemed unfair when the alleged fugitive had no opportunity to prove that

he owed no service to his claimant. "No man can stand up in the free States

and defend this provision of the fugitive law," commented the Enquirer,

"and the sooner it is amended the better." The Democratic paper further

complained that alleged fugitives were given no time to procure witnesses

on their behalf. The Enquirer later raised objections when a New York

commissioner, hearing a fugitive slave case, decided that he had no power

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW                                          123

to compel witnesses to attend a hearing or to answer questions at the

hearing.²⁰

Some of the extremist acts of the federal government also caused mis-

givings among the northerners who had supported the compromise of 1850

as an effort to keep a severely strained Union together. When land and

naval forces were ordered to Boston to assure a fugitive's return, the Enquirer

objected; such a show of force was unnecessary, and the order would only

increase the excitement. After alleged fugitives were forcibly rescued by

mobs and sent along their way in Syracuse and in Christiana, Pennsylvania,

the government attempted to prosecute some of the rescuers for treason.

The Enquirer regretted such extreme action by the administration. "The

attempt to make treason out of a resistance to the execution of a law of the

United States in time of peace, is simply ridiculous," it commented, "and

must bring into contempt the authority that makes it." 21

Very few northerners supported the fugitive slave law without reserva-

tions, and the authorities were extremely reluctant to act in such a way as

to create a large number of antislavery martyrs. Fewer than fifteen incidents

involving rescues or attempted rescues of fugitive slaves led to prosecutions

under the law in the entire nation, though several of these involved a

number of defendants. Cincinnati was the scene of four such prosecutions.

In 1857 David Waite and James J. Puntney of Adams County were arrested

and accused of helping eight slaves of a Kentucky master to escape. Puntney

was released after a hearing before the United States commissioner in

Cincinnati, and Waite was tried and freed when the jury could not agree

as to his guilt. The alleged owner of the slaves gave such contradictory

testimony that he was brought before the commissioner on a charge of

perjury, though later acquitted.²²

In 1857 an attempt to arrest a fugitive slave named Addison in Champaign

County touched off an involved legal dispute between United States and

Ohio officials. Addison himself escaped, but when the United States

marshals tried to arrest four white men who had allegedly assisted him,

there followed several armed clashes between the marshals and a sheriff's

posse. Before the squabble ended the federal authorities had arrested

some members of the sheriff's posse for violating the fugitive slave law,

and Ohio had arrested the marshal and his deputies for contempt of a state

court and assault. United States District Judge Humphrey H. Leavitt

decided that the marshals were wholly justified in ignoring state writs and

added that the fugitive slave law had to be obeyed regardless of prejudice

against it. After a year of prolonged wrangling the state dropped charges

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW                                        125

Groups of visitors flocked to his cell, including delegates from Methodist

and Unitarian conventions meeting in the city. The prisoner was so popular

that his jailer finally decided to leave his cell door unlocked in order to

facilitate the matter of ushering in visitors. When Connelly's brief ordeal

ended, Cincinnati's turner society arranged a mammoth celebration of his

release, complete with parade and a mass meeting, at which the former

prisoner gave the major address. Republican politicians and the abolitionists

made excellent propaganda use of Connelly's imprisonment.²⁶

To the abolitionists the fugitive slave law gave new ammunition for

their propaganda war against the peculiar institution of the South. With

the intensification of sectional differences and the abolitionist appeal to the

cause of civil liberties they gained a large audience previously unreceptive

to their message. Those abolitionists who were providing tangible aid to

fugitives on their way to Canada continued their work with little or no

interference. Levi Coffin, the organizer of such activity in the Cincinnati

area, often kept fugitives in his house "openly, . . . without any fear of

being molested." Wives of abolitionists and other women who sympathized

with the cause volunteered for work in sewing circles which provided clothing

for the destitute fugitives going through the city.²⁷

Far more abolitionists indicated a willingness to aid the fleeing slaves

than actually rendered such assistance. After 1850 antislavery meetings

invariably passed anti-fugitive slave law resolutions framed in strong and

uncompromising language. The Garrisonian Western Anti-Slavery Society

meeting in Salem, Ohio, in the fall of 1850 resolved that the newly passed

law was "but a stronger demonstration of the unjust, inhuman, God-denying

character of the American Constitution and Union" and avowed their

"determination to treat it, and its authors with deserved contempt, and the

government from which it emanated with abhorrence and execration." In

obedience to the "higher and divine law" they further resolved to "en-

courage the poor bondmen and bondwomen to escape from their masters

by offering them shelter, protection, concealment, or any other aid or

comfort in our power to afford them." 28

A group meeting at Senecaville in November 1850 passed similar resolu-

tions and declared "that we will not obey the requirements of that law,

but will trample them with scorn, contempt and indignity, beneath our feet."

They characterized the northern congressmen who had voted for the law as

"traitors to God, liberty, and the dearest rights of man" and "unfit to

make laws for any people or nation, either christian or heathen." "Their

names," they said, "should be handed down to posterity branded with

126                                                  OHIO HISTORY

disgrace and eternal infamy." The Enquirer's editor commented that he

"did not suppose that such crazy people . . . existed in any part of Southern

Ohio." 29

The return of George Washington McQuerry to slavery in 1853 inspired

even stronger comment. That summer the Western Anti-Slavery Society

resolved: "That it is a mockery of truth, and an insult to the commonest

understanding to call Ohio a free State, while a husband and father, innocent

of crime, may be seized by foreign ruffians in his own house, dragged from

his wife and helpless infants, . . . incarcerated in our jails, and driven

heavily manacled through the streets of our Queen City"--all "sanctioned

and confirmed by the supreme law of the land.30

Besides rendering direct aid to fugitive slaves and passing resolutions

against the hated law, abolitionists used legal measures to attempt to free

slaves passing through Ohio with their masters. Most such attempts failed,

but all of them attracted attention to the problem of slaves in the free

states at a time when northerners began to envision a slavocratic conspiracy

to open all American territory to slavery. The most famous of such cases

was that of a sixteen-year-old slave, Rosetta Armstead, who came into Ohio

with a friend of her master, who was taking her from Louisville to Virginia.

While she was in Columbus a group of abolitionists and Negroes informed

her that Ohio was a free state, and the sheriff took her to court on a writ

of habeas corpus. When Rosetta told the court she wished to be free, the

judge pronounced her free and appointed a guardian for her. Rosetta was

later arrested under the fugitive slave law, but after an involved legal tangle

she regained her freedom when the United States commissioner decided

against her master.31

In 1855 the slave Celeste was freed on a writ of habeas corpus in

Cincinnati. She had been brought there by her master, who deserted her

without paying her steamboat passage from New Orleans, and won her

freedom after she told the court her master had taken her north for the

purpose of freeing her.32 Several other slaves were denied freedom in the

state courts, and some of them openly stated that they preferred to return

to slavery rather than remain in Ohio.33 In 1860 the abolitionists lost a

fight to free a twelve-year-old slave whose master was taking him to Missouri

on a steamboat. The court ruled that the stopping of boats at a landing

was incidental to the right of free navigation, and Ohio law could not

apply in such a case. The court remarked, as the Enquirer put it, "that, while

we should carefully maintain our own rights, yet the Courts must also see

to it that the rights of our neighbors were not infringed." 34

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW                                         127

The abolitionists who spearheaded these legal moves were a small minority

in the Ohio Valley. The Enquirer once estimated that they totaled no more

than a thousand in Hamilton County, and when a southern paper referred

to a state "as strongly tinctured with Abolitionism as Ohio," the editor

accused his southern colleagues of ignorance of the true state of affairs.

It was, he retorted, "a few indefatigable ultras" making a "loud noise

and din," when "in truth, not one man in one thousand has any sympathy

with them, much less connection or agency." 35 While the indignant editor

was literally correct, the southern paper had not wholly missed the mark.

The fugitive slave issue did enable the abolitionists to influence the thinking

of many who had no overt connection or sympathy with the antislavery

movement. It was their most effective propaganda issue and they used it

constantly after 1850.

At the same time the abolitionists found the fugitive issue so useful for

their purposes, politicians found it irksome and explosive, especially after

the Republicans replaced the Whigs as one of the nation's two leading

parties. Democratic and Whig leaders recognized the importance of the

compromise of 1850 as a last desperate measure to prevent the disruption

of the Union, though they also had to take account of popular resentment

against the fugitive slave law in large sections of the North. Eventually

the Democrats staked their cause on preserving the compromise and the

newly organized Republicans on an appeal to northern pride and interests.

In their early years the Republicans, as a new party in opposition to the

Democratic national administration, placed considerable emphasis on states'

rights. The Republican-dominated Ohio legislature of 1855-56 not only

urged the repeal of the fugitive slave law but also passed a habeas corpus

act to make its enforcement more difficult. This was actually an attempt to

interfere with the execution of a federal law in Ohio. Local Republican

spokesmen endorsed the states' rights policy. In 1857 the Republican Xenia

News criticized the law and maintained that the people of Champaign County

and the rest of Ohio would not permit enforcement of the measure. "The

force of that law's infamous provisions is about done in Ohio." the paper

commented flatly. Such language brought a sharp retort from the Democrats,

whose leading Cincinnati organ pointed out "that the entire Black-Republican

party of Ohio," leaders and rank and file, had labored to make the fugitive

slave law "obnoxious and infamous, so that it will become inoperative and

virtually be repealed, without the interference of Congress." Commenting

on the Republicans' personal liberty laws, the Democratic editor asserted

that the Republicans were "the enemies of the Constitution." He arrived at

128                                                   OHIO HISTORY

that conclusion because the constitution, which was the supreme law of the

land, imposed an obligation in relation to fugitive slaves which the Republi-

cans disregarded and did all in their power to render inoperative.³⁶

Some aspirants for political offices were directly affected by their views

on the fugitive slave law and its enforcement in Ohio.³⁷ In 1859 Chief

Justice Joseph R. Swan, who had a radical anti-Nebraska record, lost the

nomination for reelection because he had upheld the prosecution of the

rescuers in the Oberlin-Wellington rescue cases when they came before the

state tribunal. With the support of a strong antislavery delegation from the

Western Reserve, the Republican convention snubbed Swan and nominated

William Y. Gholson of Cincinnati, whose supporters assured the delegates

that he was sound on the fugitive question. Later evidence published by the

Democrats seemed to prove Gholson far from sympathetic with the abolition-

ists. Nevertheless, he defeated his Democratic opponent in a campaign which

revolved largely around the fugitive slave law issue.³⁸ It is difficult to tell

just how the candidates' positions on the fugitive slave law influenced the

election, but the explosive nature of the question undoubtedly contributed

to the emotional emphasis in state and national politics in the 1850's.

Little did those congressmen who voted for the fugitive slave law of 1850

realize the many ramifications that law would have. As an amendment to

one of the nation's first statutes and a supplement to a clause of the consti-

tution it seemed only to provide slave owners with additional protection for

their peculiar type of property. But in the Ohio Valley and in other parts

of the nation the new measure contributed greatly to the increase in mis-

understanding between the sections. Few slaves were remanded from the

valley and even fewer abolitionists were prosecuted for helping slaves

escape, yet the impact of the law proved much greater than the numbers

involved. To the residents south of the river, the Negroes, the officials, the

abolitionists, and the office seekers, the law posed new problems or presented

new opportunities. It was one of a number of factors which molded opinion

and convinced northern residents of the valley that they and others living

on free soil had a way of life superior to that of their southern neighbors,

and that if necessary they would prove that superiority by force of arms.

THE AUTHOR: Larry Gara, an associate

professor of history at Wilmington College, is

the author of The Liberty Line: The Legend

of the Underground Railroad.