The political settlement between the North and South that Henry Clay designed—the Compromise of 1850—lasted only four years (see Chapter 11). Its central provisions inevitably sparked controversy. Allowing new territories to decide the question of slavery themselves ensured that the issue would continually resurface. Americans continued to migrate westward by the thousands, and as long as slaveholders could carry their human property into federally controlled territories, northern resentment would smolder. The Fugitive Slave Act, another component of the Compromise of 1850, imposed fines for hiding or rescuing fugitive slaves; but abolitionists evaded the law and agitated to have it overturned.
Shortly after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, James Hamlet was seized in New York City, convicted, and returned to slavery in Maryland without even being allowed to communicate with his wife and children. The New York black community was outraged, and with help from white neighbors it swiftly raised $800 to buy his freedom. In 1851 Euphemia Williams, who had lived for years as a free woman in Pennsylvania, was seized, her presumed owner claiming also her six children, all Pennsylvania-born. A federal judge released the Williamses, but the case caused alarm in the North.
Abolitionists often interfered with the enforcement of the law. When two Georgians came to Boston to reclaim William and Ellen Craft, admitted fugitives,
With the defeat of a Greek Army in 1826, the Victorious Turks sold 3,000 Greek women and children at slave auctions in Constantinople. The Greek Slave, by the American sculptor Hiram Powers (1844), caused a sensation. How would whites feel if their young women were sold as slaves?
Source: Hiram Powers, Greek Slave 1847. Marble, 65 1/2 in. H (166.4 cm). Collection of The Newark Museum. Gift of Franklin Murphy, Jr., 1926. Photographer: Richard Goodbody. Photograph © The Newark Museum.
This painting by Thomas S. Noble describes the story of Margaret Garner, a slave who escaped with her family across the frozen Ohio River to Cincinnati. When apprehended by slavecatchers, she killed her daughter rather than return her to slavery. Garner's story inspired Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved (1987).
Free Blacks in 1850 The existence of so many free blacks caused many slaves to question their own servitude and facilitated the attempts of others to escape from bondage.
A “vigilance committee” hounded them through the streets shouting “slave hunters, slave hunters,” and forced them to return home empty-handed. The Crafts prudently—or perhaps in disgust—decided to leave the United States for England. Early in 1851 a Virginia agent captured Frederick “Shadrach” Jenkins, a waiter in a Boston coffeehouse. While Jenkins was being held for deportation, a mob of African Americans broke into the courthouse and hustled him off to Canada. That October a slave named Jerry, who had escaped from Missouri, was arrested in Syracuse, New York. Within minutes the whole town had the news. Crowds surged through the streets, and when night fell, a mob smashed into the building where Jerry was being held and spirited him away to safety in Canada.
Such incidents exacerbated sectional feelings. White Southerners accused the North of reneging on
One of the main promises made in the Compromise of 1850, while the sight of harmless human beings being hustled off to a life of slavery disturbed many Northerners who were not abolitionists.
However, most white Northerners were not prepared to interfere with the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act themselves. Of the 332 blacks put on trial under the law, about 300 were returned to slavery, most without incident. Nevertheless, enforcing the law in the northern states became steadily more difficult.
•••-[Read the Document Drew, from Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada at Www. myhistorylab. com
Tremendously important in increasing sectional tensions and bringing home the evils of slavery to still more people in the North was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Unde Tom’s Gubin (1852). Stowe was neither a professional writer nor an abolitionist, and she had almost no firsthand knowledge of slavery. But her conscience had been roused by the Fugitive Slave Act. In gathering material for the book, she depended heavily on abolitionist writers, many of whom she knew. She dashed it off quickly; as she later recalled, it seemed to write itself. Nevertheless, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was an enormous success: 10,000 copies were sold in a week, and 300,000 in a year. It was translated into dozens of languages. Dramatized versions were staged in countries throughout the world.
Harriet Beecher Stowe was hardly a distinguished writer; it was her approach to the subject that explains the book’s success. Her tale of the pious, patient slave Uncle Tom, the saintly white child Eva, and the callous slave driver Simon Legree appealed to an audience far wider than that reached by the abolitionists. She avoided the self-righteous, accusatory tone of most abolitionist tracts and did not seek to convert readers to belief in racial equality. Many of her southern white characters were fine, sensitive people, while the cruel Simon Legree was a transplanted Connecticut Yankee. There were many heart-rending scenes of pain, selfsacrifice, and heroism. The story proved especially effective on the stage: The slave Eliza crossing the
Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, became a staple of the mid-nineteenth-century theater. This poster shows Simon Legree whipping a blameless Uncle Tom.
Frozen Ohio River to freedom, the death of Little Eva, Eva and Tom ascending to Heaven—these scenes left audiences in tears.
Southern critics pointed out, correctly enough, that Stowe’s picture of plantation life was distorted, her slaves atypical. They called her a “coarse, ugly, long-tongued woman” and accused her of trying to “awaken rancorous hatred and malignant jealousies” that would undermine national unity. Most Northerners, having little basis on which to judge the accuracy of the book, tended to discount southern criticism as biased. In any case, Uncle Tom’s Cabin raised questions that transcended the issue of accuracy. Did it matter if every slave was not as kindly as Uncle Tom, as determined as George Harris? What if only one white master was as evil as Simon Legree? No earlier white American writer had looked at slaves as people.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin touched the hearts of millions. Some became abolitionists; others, still hesitating to step forward, asked themselves as they put the book down, “Is slavery just?”
•••-[Read the Document Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin at Www. myhistorylab. com
UflWatch the Video Harriet Beecher Stowe & The Making of Uncle Tom's Cabin at Www. myhistorylab. com
World History
