Archibald H. Grimke, William Lloyd Garrison the Abolitionist

[346] he reaches a land where slave-hounds enter not, and panting fugitives find freedom. Wendell Phillips tells of an old woman of seventy who asked his advice about flying, though originally free, and fearful only of being caught up by mistake. The distress everywhere was awful, the excitement indescribable. From Boston alone in the brief space of three weeks after the rescue of Shadrach, nearly a hundred of these panic-stricken creatures had fled. The whole number escaping into Canada Charles Sumner placed as high as six thousand souls. But in addition to this large band of fugitives, others emigrated to the interior of New England away from the seaboard centers of trade and commerce where the men-hunters abounded.

The excitement and the perils of this period were not confined to the colored people. Their white friends shared both with them. We are indebted to Mr. Phillips for the following graphic account of these excitements and perils in Boston in March, 1851. He has been describing the situation in the city, in respect of the execution of the infamous law, to Elizabeth Pease, and goes on thus: “I need not enlarge on this; but the long evening sessionsdebates about secret escapes-plans to evade where we can't resist — the door watched that no spy may enterthe whispering consultations of the morning-some putting property out of their hands, planning to incur penalties, and planning also that, in case of conviction, the Government may get nothing from them — the doing, and answering no questionsintimates forbearing to ask the knowledge which it may be dangerous to have-all remind one of those ”