Frederick Douglass

In the midst of these fugitive slave troubles came the book known as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a work of marvelous depth and power.

It became thereafter almost a dead letter, for slaveholders found that not only did it fail to put them in possession of their slaves, but that the attempt to enforce it brought odium upon themselves and weakened the slave system.

To me, they were heroic defenders of the just rights of man against manstealers and murderers.

But the thing which more than all else destroyed the fugitive slave law was the resistance made to it by the fugitives themselves.

Despite the efforts of Daniel Webster and Millard Fillmore and our Doctors of Divinity, the law fell rapidly into disrepute.

Although I was now myself free, I was not without apprehension.

Asleep or awake, at work or at rest, in church or market, he was liable to surprise and capture.

While the law was a terror to the free, it was a still greater terror to the escaped bondman.

Even colored people who had been free all their lives felt themselves very insecure in their freedom, for under this law the oaths of any two villains were sufficient to consign a free man to slavery for life.

Its chief effect was to produce alarm and terror among the class subject to its operation, and this it did most effectually and distressingly.

As a means of recapturing their runaway property in human flesh the law was an utter failure.

The hardships imposed by this atrocious and shameless law were cruel and shocking, and yet only a few of all the fugitives of the Northern States were returned to slavery under its infamously wicked provisions.