A few clergymen had already taken ground against the blood-stained sin, and were singled out by both pulpit and press, as marks for their poisoned arrows. The ablest and most ultra of these, was Theodore Parker, the singularly gifted and truly eloquent preacher of the 28th Congregational Society of Boston. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, though younger and later in the cause, was equally true, and was amongst the first to invite anti-slavery lecturers to his pulpit. The writer of this, a negro, at his invitation occupied his desk at Newburyport, when it cost something to be an abolitionist.
Brave men of other denominations, in different sections of the country, were fast taking their stand with the friends of the slave.
The battle in Congress was raging hotter and hotter. The Florida war, the admission of Texas, and the war against Mexico, had given the slaveholders a bold front, and they wielded the political lash without the least mercy or discretion upon all who offended them. Greater protection for slave property in the free states was demanded by those who saw their human chattels escaping.
The law of 1793, for the recapture of fugitive slaves, was now insufficient for the great change in public opinion, and another code was asked for by the South. On the 18th of September, 1850, the Fugitive Slave Bill was passed, and became the law of the land.
This was justly condemned by good men of all countries, as the most atrocious enactment ever passed by any legislative body. The four hundred thousand free colored residents in the non slave-holding states,
