were liable at any time to be seized under this law and carried into servitude.
Intense excitement was created in every section of the free states where any considerable number of colored persons resided. In Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio, where there were many fugutives and descendants of former slaves, the feeling rose to fever-heat. Every railroad leading toward Canada was thronged with blacks fleeing for safety. In one town in the State of New York, every member of a Methodist Church, eighty-two in number, including the pastor, fled to Canada.
The passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill was a sad event to the colored citizens of this State. At that time there were eight thousand nine hundred and seventy-five persons of color in Massachusetts. In thirty-six hours after the passage of the bill was known here, five and thirty colored persons applied to a well-known philanthropist in this city for counsel. Before sixty hours passed by, more than forty had fled. The laws of Massachusetts could not be trusted to shelter her own children; they must flee to Canada.[1]
Numbers of these fugitives had escaped many years before, had married free partners, had acquired property, and had comfortable homes; these were broken up and their members scattered. Soon after the law went into force, the kidnappers made their appearance in Boston.
The fact that men-stealers were prowling about the streets, through which, eighty years before, the enemies of liberty had been chased, caused no little sen-*
- ↑ "Rendition of Thomas Simms." Theodore Parker, p. 20, 1852.
