urely the motive was something other than a
desire to recover lost property. Upon the Whig party had been fastened
the odium for the enactment of the law, and the act unrepealed meant the
death of the party. The Democrats saw good reason for laughter.

CHAPTER VIII. THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

Wherever there are slaves there are fugitives if there is an available
place of refuge. The wilds of Florida were such a refuge during the
early part of last century. When the Northern States became free,
fugitive slaves began to escape thither, and Canada, when it could be
reached, was, of course, the goal of perfect security and liberty for
all.

A professed object of the early anti-slavery societies was to prevent
the enslavement of free negroes and in other ways to protect their
rights. During the process of emancipation in Northern States large
numbers of colored persons were spirited off to the South and sold into
slavery. At various places along the border there were those who made
it their duty to guard the rights of negroes and to prevent kidnapping.
These guardians of the border furnished a nucleus for the development of
what was later known as the Underground Railroad.

In 1796 President Washington wrote a letter to a friend in New Hampshire
with reference to obtaining the return of a negro servant. He was
careful to state that the servant should remain unmolested rather than
"excite a mob or riot or even uneasy sensations in the minds of well
disposed citizens." The result was that the servant remained free.
President Washington here assumed that "well disposed citizens" would
oppose her return to slavery. Three years earlier the President had
himself signed a bill to facilitate by legal process the return of
fugitives escaping into other States. He was certainly aware that such
an act was on the statute books when he wrote his request to his friend
in New Hampshire, yet he expected that, if an attempt were made to
remove the refugee by force, riot and resistance by a mob would be the
result.

Not until after the foreign slave-trade had been prohibited and the
domestic trade had been developed, and not until there was a pro-slavery
reaction in the South which banished from the slave States all
anti-slavery propaganda, did the systematic assistance rendered
to fugitive slaves assume any large proportions or arouse bitter
resentment. It began in the late twenties and early thirties of
the nineteenth century, exte