50 a host of "slave catchers" and "man
hunters," as they were called, invaded the North, and negroes who had
escaped twenty or thirty years before were hunted up and dragged back to
slavery by the marshals of the United States. This so excited the free
negroes and the people of the North, that several times during 1851 they
rose and rescued a slave from his captors. In New York a slave named
Hamet, in Boston one named Shadrach, in Syracuse one named Jerry, and at
Ottawa, Illinois, one named Jim, regained their liberty in this way. So
strong was public feeling that Vermont in 1850 passed a "Personal
Liberty Law," for the protection of negroes claimed as slaves.[1]

[Footnote 1: On the Compromise of 1850 read Rhodes's _History of the
United States_, Vol. I., pp. 104-189; Schurz's _Life of Clay_, Vol. II.,
Chap. 26. Do not fail to read the speeches of Calhoun, Clay, Webster,
Seward; also Lodge's _Life of Webster_, pp. 264-332. For the rescue
cases read Wilson's _Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America_,
Chap. 26.]

The North was now becoming strongly antislavery. It had long been
opposed to the extension of slavery, but was now becoming opposed to its
very existence. How deep this feeling was, became apparent in the summer
of 1852, when Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe published her story of _Uncle
Tom's Cabin_. It was not so much a picture of what slavery was, as of
what it might be, and was so powerfully written that it stirred and
aroused thousands of people in the North who, till then, had been quite
indifferent. In a few months everybody was laughing and crying over
"Topsy" and "Eva" and "Uncle Tom"; and of those who read it great
numbers became abolitionists.

SUMMARY

1. The Mexican state of Texas revolts and in 1837 becomes independent.

2. President Tyler secretly negotiates a treaty for the annexation of
Texas to the United States, but this is defeated (1844).

3. The labors of Elijah White and others lead to the rapid settlement of
the Oregon country.

4. The annexation of Texas and the occupation of the whole of Oregon
become questions in the campaign of 1844. The Democrats carry the
election, Texas is annexed, and the Oregon country is divided between
Great Britain and the United States.

5. The question of the boundary of Texas brings on the Mexican War, and
in 1848 another vast stretch of country is acquired.

6. The acquisition of this new territory, which was free soil, causes a
struggle for the