he fled. Recently an
example occurred even in the city of Cincinnati in respect to one
of our most respectable citizens. Not having visited Ohio at all,
but Covington, on the opposite side of the river, a little slave
of his escaped over to Cincinnati. He pursued it; he found it in
the house in which it was concealed; he took it out, and it was
rescued by the violence and force of a negro mob from his
possession--the police of the city standing by, and either
unwilling or unable to afford the assistance which was requisite
to enable him to recover his property.

Upon this subject I do think that we have just and serious cause
of complaint against the free states. I think they fail in
fulfilling a great obligation, and the failure is precisely upon
one of those subjects which in its nature is the most irritating
and inflaming to those who live in the slave states.[338]

The Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 was superseded by that of 1850 by a
sort of political bargaining on the other measures of the Compromise.
The letter of the new law was not much different from the one of
1793--the chief changes being in the exaction of severer penalties and
the transfer of jurisdiction to the federal courts. But even if
members from the North did vote for the new provision there was no
public sentiment in the North back of its enforcement. Everyone in
Kentucky was heartily in favor of it, but that mattered little. The
effectiveness of any fugitive slave law depended upon the spirit in
which it was met in the North, for it was there that the law was to be
applied. It remained for a more or less forgotten decision of the
Supreme Court in 1861 to show the greatest weakness of all laws for
the recovery of runaway slaves in the North.

In October, 1859, the Woodford County (Kentucky) grand jury returned
an indictment against Willis Lago, a free Negro, charging him with the
seduction and enticement of Charlotte, a Negro slave, from her owner,
C. W. Nickols. A copy of this indictment certified and authenticated
according to the federal law was presented to the Governor of Ohio by
the authorized agent of the Governor of Kentucky and the arrest and
delivery of the fugitive from justice demanded. The Governor of Ohio
referred the matter to the Attorney-General of the State and upon his
advice the chief executive refused to deliver up the Negro. The
Supreme Court having original