fell into disrepute, nor could the plaudits of
politicians and union committees save its clerical professors from
forfeiting the esteem and confidence of multitudes of Christian
people.

But Whig politicians and cotton Divines are not the only friends of
the fugitive law to whom it has made most ungrateful returns. The
Democratic leaders, bidding against the Whigs for the Presidency, were
most vociferous in expressions of the delight they took in the human
chase. Democratic candidates for the Presidency, to the goodly number
of NINE, gave public attestations under their _signs manual_, of their
approbation of a law outraging the principles of Democracy, as well as
of common justice and humanity. Each and all of these men were
rejected, and the slaveholders selected an individual whom they were
well assured would be their obsequious tool, but who had offered no
bribe for their votes.

But did the slaveholders themselves gain more by this law than their
northern auxiliaries? They, indeed, hailed its passage as a mighty
triumph. The nation had given them a law, drafted by themselves,
laying down the rules of the hunt, as best suited their pleasure and
interest. Wealthy and influential gentlemen in our commercial cities,
out of compliment to southern electors, became amateur huntsmen, and
in New York and Boston the chase was pursued with all the zeal and
apparent delight that could have been expected in Guinea or Virginia.
Slave-catching was the test, at once, of patriotism and gentility,
while sympathy for the wretched fugitive was the mark of vulgar
fanaticism. The north was humbled in the dust, by the action of her
own recreant sons. Every "good citizen" found himself, for the first
time in the history of mankind, a slave-catcher by law. Every
official, appointed by a slave-catching judge, was invested with the
authority of a High Sheriff, being empowered to call out the _posse
comitatus_, and compel the neighbors to join in a slave chase. Well,
indeed, might the slaveholders rejoice and make merry;--well, indeed,
in the insolence of triumph, might they command the people of the
north to hold their tongues about "the peculiar institution," under
pain of their sore displeasure.

But amid this slavery jubilee, a woman's heart was swelling and
heaving with indignant sorrow at the outrages offered to God and man
by the fugitive law. Her pent up emotions struggled for utterance,
and at last, as if moved by some mighty ins