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the prisoner, there was nothing to do but to give him up. Glover was soon landed in Canada, and the people returned quietly to their homes. Nearly every newspaper in the state applauded the Glover rescue, and the leaders of the riot, afterward arrested, were acquitted by a decision of the supreme court of the state on the ground that the Fugitive Slave Law was unconstitutional. The examples above mentioned are but a few of the most conspicuous out of hundreds. A half-witted person could have seen that the Fugitive Slave Law could not be enforced in most sections of the North; and any slaveholder could have seen, and most of them did see, that the law was doing irreparable harm to the institution of slavery by unifying the North against it.

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

For more than half a century before the Civil War there was an ever increasing stream of slaves fleeing from their masters into the free states. In the years immediately preceding the war the number was estimated at about a thousand a year. It is true that many of the slaves were so well treated by their owners, or so grossly ignorant, that they had little or no desire to escape. But there were others, and their name was legion, in whose bosom burned a longing for liberty, so natural to the human heart. Especially was this true of those who had picked up the rudiments of an education. Many in the far South knew only that freedom lay in the direction of the North Star, that the distance was great, and that the way was fraught with unknown perils. The fugitives usually traveled by night and secreted themselves in the mountains or thickets during the day. Most of them came from the border states, and they comprised the most intelligent of their race. Some fled because of cruel treatment, but with the great majority it was the fear of the dreaded auction block that drove them to seek the land of liberty. However kind the master might be, however reluctant to part with his servants, his death or business reverses might at any time send them to the great cotton plantations or to the rice swamps of the far South, the most dreadful calamity that could come to a border-state slave. When once a slave was carried by a trader to the southern market, it was seldom that he was again seen or heard of by his friends and kindred.

The fleeing black man was often recaptured before reaching the free states, after which his condition was made worse than before.

But thousands succeeded in crossing the border line and in breathing the air of freedom. But even then, after the Compromise of 1850, their chances of evading capture would have been very meager but for the aid rendered them by persons living along their route. There were hundreds of people in the free states, some colored, but most of them white, who were systematically engaged in giving aid, comfort, and advice to the fleeing slave. These lawbreakers were for the most part respectable and, in other respects, law-abiding citizens. They acted on principle: they believed in a higher law than any framed by human legislators; they believed that a man held in bondage by no fault of his own had a right to his freedom, if he desired it, and they felt it a duty to aid him in gaining it, if in their power. But, in addition to the pleasure of relieving the sufferings of the fleeing slave, there was in the business of aiding the runaway "the excitement of piracy, the secrecy of burglary, the daring of insurrection." The work was carried on with the utmost secrecy and in the most systematic manner. The system was known as the Underground Railroad.

Great sacrifices.

It consisted of many different routes across the free states. The "stations," twenty miles or more apart, were usually private homes in the garrets or cellars of which, or in nearby caves or haymows, the fugitives were kept and fed during the day, and from which they were sent on their way at nightfall. Many of those who engaged in the work did so at their own peril and often at great self-sacrifice, for the law was persistently against them. Mr. Rush Sloane of Sandusky, Ohio, paid $3000 in fines for assisting runaways to Canada; Thomas Garrett of Wilmington, Delaware, assisted twenty-seven hundred fugitives and paid $8000 in fines for violating the slave laws. Calvin Fairbank spent seventeen years in the penitentiary for similar offenses.2

One of the most active workers in connection with the Underground Railroad, and the reputed president of the system was Levi Coffin, a prosperous merchant who managed the station at Newport, Indiana, for twenty years. During this period he and his faithful wife, who were Quakers, harbored at least one hundred fugitives each year. The story in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" of the slave woman crossing the Ohio River on the floating ice with her child was a true story, and after this woman reached the home of the Coffins, 1 Hart's Introduction to Siebert's "Underground Railroad." 2 Siebert's "Underground Railroad," pp. 110, 159, 254, 277.

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Mrs. Coffin gave her the name "Eliza Harris," and Mrs. Stowe used this name in her novel. The largest number ever harbored by Levi Coffin in one night was seventeen. For this he was arraigned before the grand jury. He was known to be a man of great probity, and nothing could lead him to speak falsely. When arraigned and asked under oath if he had harbored fugitive slaves, he answered that he had no legal knowledge that he had done so; he admitted having received and ministered unto certain persons who had come to his house destitute and homeless. He had done this in obedience

to the injunctions of the Bible. These persons, it is true, had said they were fugitive slaves; but he had nothing but their word for it, and as the testimony of a slave could not be received in court there was no proof of his guilt.2 Mr. Coffin was released.

One of the most active of the underground workers was William Still, a free colored man of Philadelphia, who served for many years as chairman of the Vigilance Committee of that city, and who after the war published a large volume giving the experiences of the fugitives as related by themselves. No career in the underground work was more picturesque and romantic than that of Harriet Tubman, herself a fugitive from Maryland. She was almost white, was very religious and intelligent, and she earned the name of "The Moses of her People." With Philadelphia as her headquarters she would collect money from sympathizers and make a journey to slave land. After collecting a company of her people, she piloted them across the border and sometimes accompanied them to Canada. She would quiet babies with drugs and have them carried in baskets. She is said to have made nineteen excursions into the slave states and to have abducted three hundred slaves without detection. Josiah Henson, also a fugitive, founded a colony and a school in Canada, and made various journeys to the South, abducting in all 118 slaves.*

One of the most powerful agencies in shaping the political conscience at the North during the decade preceding the war was "Uncle Tom's Cabin," by Harriet Beecher Stowe. This novel cannot 1 Coffin's "Reminiscences," p. 113.

2 Coffin, p. 192.

3 This woman was employed as a scout and spy in the Civil War. She is still living (1903) near Auburn, New York.

4 It has been estimated that as many as sixty thousand or even seventy thousand colored people, a large majority of whom were fugitives, resided in Canada in 1860. Many of them purchased small farms and built houses; others hired out as farm laborers, lumbermen, etc. Family life soon became far more regular than in slavery, and the moral condition was greatly improved.

"Uncle Tom's Cabin."

be named among the greatest works of genius. The narrative shows much bias in the writer, and she is often unfair to the South; but as a series of pictures of slave life, colored with a profound human sympathy, the book attracted and held the attention of readers of every class. It sprung into immediate popularity; three hundred thousand copies were sold within the first year after publication; the sales soon exceeded a million; the book spread over England and her colonies, and was translated into twenty languages. The political effect of this novel did not appear at first, but it eventually became an important agent in the world of politics. The story appealed particularly to the young, and thousands of the boys who in the fifties laughed at Topsy, loved little Eva, wept over the fate of Uncle Tom, and became enraged at the brutal Lagree, were voters in 1860; and their votes, as determined by that book, which led them to believe that slavery was wrong, became a powerful element in effecting the political revolution of that year.

SLAVE LIFE IN THE SOUTH

A hundred years ago the universal verdict of the American people was that slavery was an evil. Such leaders as Washington and Jefferson, themselves slaveholders, deplored the existence of the institution as long as they lived. In later years, when slavery became the chief political issue, almost the entire South, following the lead of Calhoun, pronounced slavery in the United States a positive good. This change was partially due to conviction; but undoubtedly it arose in part from the fact that the slaveholder grew weary of defending what he confessed to be an evil, and, in answer to the cry of the Abolitionist, he veered around, took the offensive, and pronounced slavery a good thing. The question was also, as we have seen, an economic one. If slavery was an economic good, as the people of the South believed, it must also be a moral good; and if both, it ought to be defended and extended. In these latter days, since the institution is a thing of the past, the universal verdict is that which antedated the career of Calhoun - that slavery was an evil, an unmitigated evil.

1 Rhodes, Vol. I, p. 284.

2 That slavery was a great drawback to the South, from an economic standpoint, is shown very forcibly, with many statistics, in the first chapter of Helper's "Impending Crisis." This book, written by a southerner and published in 1857, was an unanswerable arraignment of slavery.

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Nevertheless there were pleasant features in connection with slavery, especially in the border states, where it existed in a mild form. Many a slave was better kept by a humane master than he could have kept himself had he been free. In many a home the attachment between the owner and his slave was a sincere one; the slave was educated and taught religion, and was practically a member of the family. Many of this class had little desire for freedom. But the great majority of slaves were not of this class. Except the house servants, coachmen, and the like, the slaves of the cotton states were toilers in the field. They spent their lives in unrequited toil; and to one who had a spark of the consciousness of manhood or womanhood, what a dreary, cheerless, hopeless life it must have been!

On the great plantations the negroes lived in filth and wretchedness in villages of huts. Their clothing was made of "negro cloth," the cheapest and coarsest material that could be had; their food was almost exclusively corn meal, which they prepared in addition to the day's toil, often exceeding fifteen hours, in the field. Meat was occasionally allowed to those engaged in the most exhausting labor. And yet, where the conditions were at all favorable, the slave was a happy creature. This was due to the inherent quality of the race, and to the fact that he had no care of his own, no anxiety for the morrow. The chief punishment of the negro was flogging, and this was often administered with great severity, not only for insubordination, but for failure to perform the allotted task of labor. If a slave turned against his master, or attempted to escape, he was shot, or he received other punishment that often resulted in his death. There was no law against killing a slave for such provocation; but the willful murder of a negro was a crime in all the Southern states. If, however, a negro was killed by a white man, it often happened that there were no witnesses, or none but slaves, whose testimony was not good in law, and for this reason punishment seldom followed.

The slave lived in gross ignorance. Nearly all the cotton states forbade the teaching of slaves to read or write. In Virginia the owner alone was permitted to do this; in North Carolina the slaves might be taught arithmetic. The Episcopal bishop of Louisiana, Leonidas Polk, who afterward became prominent in the Civil War, owned four hundred slaves, and he had them carefully trained in 1 Rhodes, Vol. I, p. 327.