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378 the session. The members had hardly taken their seats when Giddings of Ohio violently denounced the proceedings which had taken place under the fugitive-slave law. In the Senate it was Clay himself who, presenting petitions for the more effectual suppression of the African slave-trade, spoke eloquently of the abominations of that traffic, and of the beneficent results which would follow if measures were taken to transport free negroes to Liberia. He also introduced a resolution looking to the adoption of more adequate measures to prevent the employment of American vessels in the slave-trade. Hale of New Hampshire replied, on behalf of the Free Soilers, that, while he and his friends were so rudely reproved for agitating the matter of slavery, it ill comported with the position taken by the compromisers, if Clay, their chief, reopened the agitation by expressing such pious and humane sentiments about a cognate subject. This sarcasm had all the more point as just then the manifesto had appeared threatening those who should reopen the agitation with exclusion from office.

Suddenly in February, 1851, the news arrived that in Boston the execution of the fugitive-slave law had been successfully resisted by force. A fugitive slave named Shadrach had been rescued by a crowd of colored people from the hands of a deputy marshal of the United States in the courtroom. In Washington the report created an almost incredible excitement. It could hardly have