[wWiTHRow] THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY 75 
streets, greeted the procession with hisses and groans and displayed 
emblems of mourning and shame. 
It does not lie within the scope of ‘this paper to describe the 
Free Soil struggles in Kansas, nor the career of John Brown, but 
Professor Siebert quotes the estimate that the “attack on Harper’s 
Ferry caused the value of slave property in Virginia to decline to 
the extent of ten million dollars.” Not a few thoughtful minds 
agreed that the existence of the Underground Railway was on the 
whole a fortunate thing for’the slave states; that it was, as the negro 
historian, Williams, has said: “a safety valve to the institution of 
slavery. As soon as leaders arose among the slaves, who refused to 
endure the yoke, they would go North. Had they remained, there 
must have have been enacted at'the South the direful scenes of San 
Domingo.” 
General Quitman, Governor of Louisiana, declared in 1850 that 
the South had lost 100,000 slaves in the previous forty years whose 
value he estimated at $30,000,000. Both the number of fugitives 
and their value were, doubtless, very much exaggerated. In addition 
to these it is alleged that the American Colonization Society, whose 
chject was to remove free blacks from the South to the coast of 
Africa, sent out in forty years previous to 1857, 9,502 emigrants. The 
solution of the slavery problem was evidently not repatriation in 
their original home. 
In the year 1860 a very stirring international episode occurred 
in the city of Toronto. It was one of the most remarkable cases 
ever tried in Canada, both from the public sympathy that was called 
forth and from the points of law involved. A very dull account of 
this trial is given both in the Upper Canada Queen’s Bench Reports 
and Common Pleas Reports.t The facts of the case were as follows: 
John Anderson, a slave belonging to one McDonald, in Missouri, had 
left his owner’s house with the intention of escaping from slavery. 
About thirty miles from his home he met with one Diggs, a planter, 
working in a field with his negroes. Diggs told Anderson that as 
he had not a pass he could not allow him to proceed. Anderson tried 
to run away from his captor when Diggs ordered his slaves, four in 
number, to take him a prisoner. Diggs himself attempted his arrest, 
was stabbed by Anderson, and in a few days died of his wound. Ander- 
son in the meantime made good his escape and got away to Canada. 
This was in September, 1853. After seven years’ residence in Canada 
Anderson was tracked by a slave catcher, charged with murder, and 

* Queen’s Bench Reports, Vol. XX., Second Ed., pp. 124-198, Michaelmas 
Term, 24 Victoria, 1860. Court of Common Pleas Reports, Vol. XI., Second 
Ed., pp. 9-72, Hilary Term, 24 Victoria. 
