VIII.
Events moved rapidly in the decade preceding the war. In 1850 the new
Fugitive Slave Law brought discouragement to the hearts of the friends
of liberty. Douglass's utterances during this period breathed the
fiery indignation which he felt when the slave-driver's whip was heard
cracking over the free States, and all citizens were ordered to aid
in the enforcement of this inhuman statute when called upon. This law
really defeated its own purpose. There were thousands of conservative
Northern men, who, recognizing the constitutional guarantees of
slavery and the difficulty of abolishing it unless the South should
take the initiative, were content that it should be preserved intact
so long as it remained a local institution. But when the attempt was
made to make the North wash the South's dirty linen, and transform
every man in the Northern States into a slave-catcher, it wrought a
revulsion of feeling that aroused widespread sympathy for the slave
and strengthened the cause of freedom amazingly. Thousands of escaped
slaves were living in Northern communities. Some of them had acquired
homes, had educated their children, and in some States had become
citizens and voters. Already social pariahs, restricted generally to
menial labor, bearing the burdens of poverty and prejudice, they now
had thrust before them the spectre of the kidnapper, the slave-catcher
with his affidavit, and the United States [Supreme] Court, which
was made by this law the subservient tool of tyranny. This law gave
Douglass and the other abolitionists a new text. It was a set-back to
their cause; but they were not entirely disheartened, for they saw in
it the desperate expedients by which it was sought to bolster up an
institution already doomed by the advancing tide of civilization.
The loss of slaves had become a serious drain upon the border States. The number of refugees settled in the North was, of course, largely a matter of estimate. Runaway slaves were not apt to advertise their status, but rather to conceal it, so that most estimates were more likely to be under than over the truth. Henry Wilson places the number in the free States at twenty thousand. There were in Boston in 1850, according to a public statement of Theodore Parker, from four to six hundred; and in other New England towns, notably New Bedford, the number was large. Other estimates place the figures much higher. Mr. Siebert, in his _Underground Railroad_, after a careful calculation from the best obtainable data, puts the number of fugitives aided in Ohio alone at forty thousand in the thirty years preceding 1860, and in the same period nine thousand in the city of Philadelphia alone, which was one of the principal stations of the underground railroad and the home of William Still, whose elaborate work on the _Underground Railroad_ gives the details of many thrilling escapes.
In the work of assisting runaway slaves Douglass found congenial
employment. It was exciting and dangerous, but inspiring and
soul-satisfying. He kept a room in his house always ready for
fugitives, having with him as many as eleven at a time. He would keep
them over night, pay their fare on the train for Canada, and give them
half a dollar extra. And Canada, to her eternal honor be it said, received these assisted emigrants, with their fifty cents apiece, of alien race, debauched by slavery, gave them welcome and protection, refused to enter into diplomatic relations for their rendition to bondage, and spoke well of them as men and citizens when Henry Clay and the other slave [pro-slavery] leaders denounced them as the most worthless of their class. The example of Canada may be commended to those persons in the United States, of little faith, who, because in thirty years the emancipated race have not equalled the white man in achievement, are fearful lest nothing good can be expected of them.
In the stirring years of the early fifties Douglass led a busy life. He had each week to fill the columns of his paper and raise the money to pay its expenses. Add to this his platform work and the underground railroad work, which consisted not only in personal aid to the fugitives, but in raising money to pay their expenses, and his time was very adequately employed. In every anti-slavery meeting his face was welcome, and his position as a representative of his own peculiar people was daily strengthened.
