rth into the land.

How far antislavery documents had influence on the slaves themselves, it
is difficult to say. They could neither read nor write; but it is
remarkable that from this period a large number of slaves made their
escape from the South and fled to the North, protected by
philanthropists, Abolitionists, and kind-hearted-people generally.

How they contrived to travel a thousand miles without money, without
suitable clothing, pursued by blood-hounds and hell-hounds, hiding in
the daytime in swamps, morasses, and forests, walking by night in
darkness and gloom, until passed by friendly hands through "underground
railroads" until they reached Canada, is a mystery. But these efforts to
escape from their hard and cruel masters further intensified the
exasperation of the South.

It was in 1836 that Michigan and Arkansas applied for admission as
States into the Union,--one free and the other with slavery. Discussions
on some technicalities concerning the conditions of Michigan's admission
gave Mr. Calhoun a chance for more argumentation about the sovereignty
of a State, which, considering the fact that Michigan had not then been
admitted but was awaiting the permission of Congress _to be_ a State,
showed the weakness of his logic in the falsity of his premise. Besides
Arkansas, the slave-power also gained access to a strip of free
territory north of the compromise line of 36 deg.30' and the Missouri
River. In 1837 John Quincy Adams, "the old man eloquent" of the House
of Representatives, narrowly escaped censure for introducing a petition
from slaves in the District of Columbia. In 1838 Calhoun introduced
resolutions declaring that petitions relative to slavery in the District
were "a direct and dangerous attack on the institutions of all the
slave-holding States." In 1839 Henry Clay offered a petition for the
repression of all agitation respecting slavery in the District. Calhoun
saw and constantly denounced the danger. He knew the power of public
opinion, and saw the rising tide. Conservatism heeded the warning, and
the opposition to agitation intensified all over the South and the
North; but to no avail. New societies were formed; new papers were
established; religious bodies began to take position for and against the
agitation; the Maine legislature passed in the lower House, and almost
in the upper, resolutions denouncing slavery in the District; while the
Abolitionists labored incessantly and vigorously to