hat when they took Christ for their
guide, they found that they could not shut out the friendless people
whom the law kept from the schools, the polls, and the courts.

These few scattered facts will give some notion of the bitter feeling
that prevailed during the first ten or twelve years of the fight against
slavery in Ohio. Afterwards it became less intense, as slavery became a
political question between the two great parties of that day, the Whigs
and the Democrats. Neither party expected to abolish slavery, but the
Whigs hoped to keep it out of the territories and all the new states.
Both parties split upon this question at last, and in 1856 the
anti-slavery Whigs and anti-slavery Democrats joined in forming the
Republican party, which in 1860 elected Abraham Lincoln upon its promise
to shut slavery up to the states where it already existed.

But it must not be supposed, because the first bitter feeling had passed
away, that the facts were changed or that the tragedies and outrages had
ceased. After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, there was
a new hunt for runaways all over the state, and business on the
underground railroad was never so brisk. The hatred of slavery was
revived in all its intensity by such cases as that of Margaret Gorden
in 1856. This unhappy mother had escaped from Kentucky with her four
children to the house of a free colored man below Mill Creek in Hamilton
County, where they remained concealed with thirteen other fugitives. One
night the place was suddenly attacked by the slavehunters under the lead
of the United States officers. A fight followed, and several on both
sides were wounded, but at last the slaves were overpowered. While the
officers were dragging the others from the house, Margaret seized a
knife from the table, and killed her little daughter rather than see
it taken back to slavery, and then turned the bloody weapon against
herself, but failed in the attempt on her own life. She was taken to
Cincinnati and tried, not for murder, but for escaping from slavery,
together with the other fugitives, who said they would "go singing to
the gallows," if only they need not go back to the South. They were all
found guilty of seeking to be free, and were returned to their owners.
On her way down the river it is said that Margaret jumped from the
boat with one of her remaining little ones in her arms. The child was
drowned, but Margaret was saved for the fate which she dreaded,