Page:The Slave Struggle in America.djvu/35

 negro blood. No free colored person might come into the State of Illinois for the purpose of residing there; such persons were liable to be prosecuted, fined, and sold to pay the fine and costs. In 1857 Iowa prohibited colored immigration, and would not permit free colored persons to testify against whites. Similar laws were passed in other States; but, harsh as they were, many of the States in 1859 enacted others still more oppressive. Maryland forbade manumission. Virginia authorised the sale of free negroes who had been sentenced for "offences punishable by confinement in penitentiary." Louisiana gave colored people the alternative of slavery or of giving up their homes. North Carolina passed similar laws, and Georgia prohibited emancipation by will, declaring all such "null and void."

In 1850 a Bill was passed providing for the enforcement of the Act for the rendition of fugitive slaves, and the passage of this Bill spread the greatest alarm throughout the States. It was estimated that there were more than 20,000 fugitives in the Free States. The law had passed but eight days when a colored man was seized in New York and hurried to Baltimore, without even being permitted to say farewell to his wife and children. A few days more, and a similar case occurred in Philadelphia. Meetings were held, and anti-slavery men resolved to defend the black fugitives with their lives. Charles Sumner addressed a huge meeting in Faneuil Hall. "Oh! it were well," he said, "that the tidings should spread throughout the land that here in Massachusetts that accursed Bill has found no servant." But if the Bill found people to resist it, it also found people ready to carry it out. Slave-catching had become a profession, and dogs were trained to hunt negroes. Colored men were shot down remorselessly in attempting to escape, and white people convicted of aiding such escapes were imprisoned for years, and fined so heavily that sometimes, unable to pay such fines, they lingered in jail until they died.

In 1853 a Bill passed through Congress, dividing that vast region west and north-west of Missouri, and stretching right away to the Rocky Mountains, into two territories, the southern to be called Kansas and the northern Nebraska. All questions relating to slavery were to be left to the people or their representatives. Now, by the Missouri compromise all this beautiful land was reserved to freedom; but in 1836 the boundaries of Missouri were extended far westward, and all that free land was covered with slaves and slave-owners—a direct violation of the compromise. This Act, leaving the people of Kansas and Nebraska to choose slavery or freedom, was also in defiance ot the terms of the compromise, and, inasmuch as the land was already covered with slave-owners, was another triumph of the slave power.