Valley, and
in this great region human elements rather than physical characteristics
proved influential. Northern Ohio was occupied by settlers from the
East, many of whom were anti-slavery. Southern Ohio was populated
largely by Quakers and other people from the slave States who abhorred
slavery. On the east and south the State bordered on slave territory,
and every part of the region was traversed by lines of travel for the
slave. In eastern and northern Indiana a favorable attitude prevailed.
Southwestern Indiana, however, and southern Illinois were occupied by
those less friendly to the slave, so that in these sections there is
little evidence of systematic aid to fugitives. But with St. Louis,
Missouri, as a starting-point, northern Illinois became honeycombed with
refuges for patrons of the Underground Railroad. The negro also found
friends in all the settled portions of Iowa, and at the outbreak of the
Civil War a lively traffic was being developed, extending from Lawrence,
Kansas, to Keokuk, Iowa.

There is respectable authority for a variety of opinions as to the
requirements of the rendition clause in the Constitution and of the Act
of Congress of 1793 to facilitate the return of fugitives from service
or labor; but there is no respectable authority in support of the view
that neither the spirit nor the letter of the law was violated by
the supporters of the Underground Railroad. This was a source of real
weakness to anti-slavery leaders in politics. It was always true that
only a small minority of their numbers were actual violators of the law,
yet such was their relation to the organized anti-slavery movement that
responsibility attached to all. The platform of the Liberty party for
1844 declared that the provisions of the Constitution for reclaiming
fugitive slaves were dangerous to liberty and ought to be abrogated.
It further declared that the members of the party would treat these
provisions as void, because they involved an order to commit an immoral
act. The platform thus explicitly committed the party to the support
of the policy of rendering aid to fugitive slaves. Four years later
the platform of the Free-soil party contained no reference whatever to
fugitive slaves, but that of 1852 denounced the Fugitive Slave Act of
1850 as repugnant to the Constitution and the spirit of Christianity and
denied its binding force on the American people. The Republican platform
of 1856 made no reference to the subj