CHAPTER IV 



EARLY MANHOOD 1851-1857 



ON the first day of October, 1851, there was shuffling 

 about the streets of Syracuse, in the quiet pursuit 

 of his simple avocations, a colored person, as nearly ' ' of 

 no account " as any ever seen. So far as was known 

 he had no surname, and, indeed, no Christian name, save 

 the fragment and travesty, " Jerry. " 



Yet before that day was done he was famous ; his name, 

 such as it was, resounded through the land; and he had 

 become, in all seriousness, a weighty personage in Ameri- 

 can history. 



Under the law recently passed, he was arrested, openly 

 and in broad daylight, as a fugitive slave, and was car- 

 ried before the United States commissioner, Mr. Joseph 

 Sabine, a most kindly public officer, who in this matter 

 was sadly embarrassed by the antagonism between his 

 sworn duty and his personal convictions. 



Thereby, as was supposed, were fulfilled the Law and the 

 Prophets the Law being the fugitive slave law recently 

 enacted, and the Prophets being no less than Henry Clay 

 and Daniel Webster. 



For, as if to prepare the little city to sacrifice its cher- 

 ished beliefs, Mr. Clay had some time before made a 

 speech from the piazza, of the Syracuse House, urging 

 upon his fellow-citizens the compromises of the Consti- 

 tution; and some months later Mr. Webster appeared, 

 spoke from a balcony near the City Hall, and to the same 

 purpose; but more so. The latter statesman was pro- 

 phetic, not only in the hortatory, but in the predictive 



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