74 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
offence. In 1850, Mr. Newton, of Michigan, was fined the sum of 
$2,850 for aiding fugitive slaves, and against Mr. R. R. Sloan, of 
Sandusky, Ohio, was given a verdict of $3,330 for aiding the escape 
of fugitive slaves, besides $1,393 in law costs. For hindering the 
arrest of a fugitive in 1855, Mr. Booth, of Wisconsin, was imprisoned 
one month and amerced in a penalty of $1,451. In 1856 Margaret 
Garner, a slave woman, fled with her four children to Cincinnati, 
Ohio. Frenzied with fear of capture she killed her favourite child, 
but with the surviving children was restored to slavery. 
‘Nhe Canadian freedmen gave a warm welcome to the fugitives. 
A declaration which they issued ran in part as follows: “ Including 
our children, we number here in Canada 20,000 souls. The popula- 
tion in the free states are, with few exceptions, the fugitive slave’s 
friends. We are poor. We can do little more for your deliverance 
than pray to God for it. We will furnish you with pocket compasses, 
and in the dark nights you can run away.” 
Upon the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, Joshua R. 
Giddings, of Ohio, declared: “The freemen of Ohio will never turn 
out to chase the panting fugitive. They will never be metamorphosed 
into bloodhounds, to track him to his hiding-place, and seize and drag 
him out, and deliver him to his tormentors. Rely upon it they will 
die first . . . . Let no man tell me there is no higher law than 
this Fugitive Bill. We feel there is a law of right, of justice, of 
freedom, implanted in the breast of every intelligent human being, 
that bids him look with scorn upon the libel on all that is called law.” 
“ Villages, towns and cities from Iowa to Maine,” says Professor 
Siebert, “but especially in the middle states, witnessed scenes calcu- 
lated to awaken the popular detestation of slavery as it had never 
been awakened before. Pitiable distress fell upon the fugitive set- 
tlers in the North and did much to quicken consciences everywhere. 
The capture of a fugitive in the place where he had been living invari- 
ably caused an outburst of indignation.” 
The appearance of Mrs. Stowe’s “ Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” in 1850, 
and of its Key of corroborative evidence in 1853, aroused the con- 
science of the ‘North like the peal of a clarion. In 1854, Anthony 
Burns, a fugitive slave was arrested in Boston; but, through the zeal 
of the abolitionists the city. was set ablaze with excitement. At a 
meeting held in Faneuil Hall it was decided to rescue Burns by force 
from the Court-House gaol which, defended by troops, had the air 
of a beleagured fortress. A thousand soldiers furnished with loaded 
cannon, assisted by four platoons of marines and battalion of artillery 
conducted Burns to ‘the United States revenue cutter by which he 
was carried back to Virginia. Fifty thousand people lined the 
