=§ 33. Change in character of cases.=--The cases of escape which occur in the period beginning with the formation of the Constitution, and ending with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, will be found, in comparison with those of colonial times, much more frequent, more complex in action, and more varied in detail. Instead of many colonies under governments independent one of another, there was now one government and one country; nevertheless, the extinction of the system of bondage and the rise of the antislavery sentiment in the Northern States brought into the cases new and difficult elements. No attempt will be made to mention the cases in their chronological order, or to describe them all. They will be classified into cases of simple escape, of kidnapping, of rescue, and of State interference; and typical examples will be described in each category.
=§ 34. The first case of rescue.=--The first attempt to enforce the act of 1793, of which any record has been discovered, immediately revealed its unfairness, and the indisposition of the North to carry it out.
Mr. Josiah Quincy, then a young lawyer, afterwards known as a public man and the President of Harvard College, has left an interesting account of his connection with the case. "He states that the process was issued by a justice of the peace, that he was retained as counsel for the alleged slave, that he prepared his brief, and went down loaded with all the necessary authorities. He found a great crowd of people assembled; but while he was in the midst of the argument, he heard a noise, and, turning around, he saw the constables lying sprawling on the floor, and a passage opening through the crowd, through which the fugitive was taking his departure without stopping to hear the opinion of the court, and that was the last of that case, and that was the last of the law of 1793 in Massachusetts."[169]
=§ 35. President Washington's demand for a fugitive.=--As has been noticed in a previous chapter, George Washington's boyhood was connected with white slavery. Now, at the zenith of his public life, we find one of his chattels the occasion of the first recorded refusal on moral grounds to return a slave. In 1796, President Washington wrote to Mr. Whipple, Collector of Portsmouth, N. H., to send back to him one of his slaves who had escaped to that place, if it could be done without exciting a mob. This letter has been preserved, and the following extract gives us an insight into President Washington's opinions upon the rendition of fugitives:--