ect.

The Underground Railroad filled an insignificant place in the general
plan for emancipation, even in the minds of the directors. It was a
lesser task preparatory to the great work. As to the numbers of slaves
who gained their freedom by means of it, there is a wide range of
opinion. Statements in Congress by Southern members that a hundred
thousand had escaped must be regarded as gross exaggerations. In any
event the loss was confined chiefly to the border States. Besides, it
has been stated with some show of reason that the danger of servile
insurrection was diminished by the escape of potential leaders.

From the standpoint of the great body of anti-slavery men who expected
to settle the slavery question by peaceable means, it was a calamity
of the first magnitude that, just at the time when conditions were
most favorable for transferring the active crusade from the general
Government to the separate States, public attention should be directed
to the one point at which the conflict was most acute and irrepressible.

Previous to 1850 there had been no general acrimonious debate in
Congress on the rendition of fugitive slaves. About half of those who
had previously escaped from bondage had not taken the trouble to go
as far as Canada, but were living at peace in the Northern States. Few
people at the North knew or cared anything about the details of a law
that had been on the statute books since 1793. Members of Congress were
duly warned of the dangers involved in any attempt to enforce a more
stringent law than the previous act which had proved a dead letter.
To those who understood the conditions, the new law also was doomed to
failure. So said Senator Butler of South Carolina. An attempt to enforce
it would be met by violence.

This prediction came true. The twenty thousand potential victims
residing in Northern States were thrown into panic. Some rushed off to
Canada; others organized means for protection. A father and son from
Baltimore came to a town in Pennsylvania to recover a fugitive. An alarm
was sounded; men, mostly colored, rushed to the protection of the one
whose liberty was threatened. Two Quakers appeared on the scene
and warned the slavehunters to desist and upon their refusal one
slave-hunter was instantly killed and the other wounded. The fugitive
was conveyed to a place of safety, and to the murderers no punishment
was meted out, though the general Government made strenuous efforts to
disc