CHAPTER XXI.

1850-1860.

Growth of Antislavery Sentiment-The Underground Railroad-The Know-Nothings - Politics-The Republican Party-The Fremont Campaign-Sale of Internal Improvements-Payment of State Debt -Political Morality grows-School Questions-Consolidation and Growth of Philadelphia.

As the Civil War approached, the political issues in Pennsylvania centred more and more around the slavery question. In the main it may be said that the State intended to be faithful to the compromise measures of 1850, which were adopted as a result of the forceful personality of Henry Clay and the vast respect felt for the statesmanship of Daniel Webster. But it became more and more evident as the years passed on that no permanent settlement was possible on this basis, and antislavery sentiment grew in extent and intensity. Especially in the southeastern counties, where the Quaker opposition to slavery had never slumbered, the determination was strong not to deny the fugitive slaves the shelter and aid humanity demanded, and not to obey that crowning infamy of compromise, the fugitive slave law. And if, as became their quiet disposition, this determination did not show itself in mobs and armed seizures, such as were common in the more militant atmosphere of Boston, it was none the less effective. Thomas Garrett, a Pennsylvania Friend, who had moved to Wilmington, was instrumental in aiding at least two thousand seven hundred blacks in their escape to freedom, was ruined in estate, and repeatedly threatened with murder. Almost every Quaker home, and they were legion, through the rich counties of Delaware and Chester, could be counted on to shield a runaway slave. But in time the more trustworthy and willing became regularly organized into a line of the underground

railroad, which quietly passed on the fugitive, night by night, till he reached safe quarters in Canada.

The lines of the underground railroad crossed the line of Mason and Dixon at points along its whole length, and, in their willingness to aid humanity, men were becoming familiar with "a higher law" than an enactment of Congress or a Constitution of the United States. Honest farmers were fined the value of a slave for giving a hungry fugitive something to eat, or liberty to sleep in a barn, and they and their neighbors did not love the southern institution more for this injustice.

A party of slave-hunters from Maryland attacked a company of colored men, among whom it was claimed a slave had taken refuge, in Lancaster County. As the negroes were armed, there seemed a prospect of a fight, which indeed soon followed, to the discomfiture of the whites. Two peaceable Friends in the neighborhood tried to prevail on both parties to avoid bloodshed, but indignantly refused to obey the summons of the sheriff to aid in capturing the fugitives. They were carried to Philadelphia on a charge of treason, were defended by Thaddeus Stevens, and acquitted.

In 1855 a North Carolinian passed through Philadelphia with his three slaves. Passmore Williamson, then an agent for the Abolition Society, informed these negroes that they became free when they entered Pennsylvania soil, and held the owner while they escaped, aided by a company of colored people. Williamson was brought into court by the slaveowner, and was consigned to prison. His case was taken to the Supreme Court of the State, and there argued on the ground that the slaves were not fugitives, and hence according to Pennsylvania law were free. But the court held that the freedom of the prisoner could only result from an apology to the court below to clear him of contempt, and this Williamson refused to give. He ultimately secured his release without a compromise by declaring that he could not produce the slaves, as they were beyond his control.

Such things as these educated public sentiment, but it was slow to assert itself in politics. The Democratic party

was evidently controlled by the slave-holders. The Whig party was less so, and President Taylor seemed disposed to take strong Union, if not antislavery, views. But VicePresident Fillmore, who succeeded him, was a Whig of the Webster type. The abolition candidate for governor, F. J. Lemoyne, had polled less than two thousand votes in 1847, and at the special election of the following year only forty-eight voters registered themselves in the Free Soil party, as it was then called. In 1851 there was no candidate, and three years later the Free Soilers polled only about two thousand votes, and yet the great Republican party was then about to be born.

The Whigs never recovered from the defeat of Winfield Scott by Franklin Pierce in 1852, and the field was open for a new party to contest for power with the triumphant Democrats. In the process of ripening antislavery sentiment, and moulding its political machinery, the nativeAmerican party occupied the ground.

The Democrats elected William Bigler governor, in 1851, by a majority of about eight thousand over his Whig competitor, Governor Johnston. At this election one thousand eight hundred and fifty votes were cast for the candidate of the new party, which was to have an important but brief existence.

We have seen that the Philadelphia riots of 1844 were the result of a strong feeling against Catholics. It was as yet sporadic and temporary, but early in the fifties an organization shrouded in mystery, enveloped by secret signs and passwords, began to have general political existence. If an outsider asked any questions, the inevitable answer was, "I don't know," and the popular sobriquet of the party soon became "Know-Nothing." Its watchword was a saying attributed to Washington, "Put none but Americans on guard to-night." Its enemies were the Catholics, who were supposed to owe allegiance to the Pope transcending that to America; the Germans, whose pleasureloving and socialistic habits were thought to be antagonistic to the American Sabbath and the Bible in schools, and

immigrants in general who were not informed about or loyal to American ideas. Its objects were to change naturalization laws so as to exclude foreigners from voting, to support the public schools with the Bible in them, to oppose political Romanism, and denominationalism in general when it injected itself into education or the State.

By 1854 it had assumed large proportions. It gave up its secret mummery and appeared in the open, challenging opposition. Many Whigs, finding their party supports breaking away under their feet, joined it, and ministers of nearly all Protestant denominations gave it strenuous assistance.

In 1854 it was strong enough to elect, with the aid of what was left of the Whigs, James Pollock by the largest majority given to a governor since the death of the Federal party. It could not, however, prevent the election of the defeated candidate (Bigler) to the Senate the following year by the Democrats, and after this its followers left it, lured by the more vital issue of antislavery. In 1857 William F. Packer, the Democrat, polled one hundred and eightyeight thousand votes, David Wilmot, the Free Soil candidate, one hundred and forty-six thousand, and Isaac Hazelhurst, the American, twenty-eight thousand, and this was the end of the Know-Nothing party in State politics.

The issues of American institutions, the Bible, the Sabbath, and the public school did not pass away, but under the surface, and cropping out sometimes, as in the American Protective Association of forty years later, have had work to do; but the party was defeated in the attempt to make a President and dictate a national policy.

Men were beginning to rally around the slavery question, and other matters sank into the background. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which seemed to open the way to the unlimited extension of slavery, aroused the fiercest feelings of opposition in the North. While abolitionists were generally regarded as dangerous disturbers of the peace, moderate men were beginning to see that there was no limit to the encroachments of the slave power,—that it must be met by an opposition as determined and as united

as itself. The Free Soil party seemed to offer the opportunity to combine, and the old Whigs, the antislavery Americans (for the party had divided on the issue in a convention held in Philadelphia in 1855), many Democrats and all abolitionists voted the Free Soil ticket. But in a little time the question of free soil became merged in the larger issue of opposition to the institution of slavery, and the Republican party, started in the Michigan peninsula, sprang into existence. In Pennsylvania it was made up of incongruous elements. Old enemies became allies. Simon Cameron came in from the Democratic camp, shrewd enough to see the opening opportunities. He had acted with his party in repealing the Missouri Compromise, but now brought his organizing ability to the service of the Republicans, and was rewarded by the senatorship in 1857. Thaddeus Stevens, a hater of all things secret and oppressive, brought in from long years of Whig and antimasonic service the power of his irresistible personality. He was a Republican by settled conviction, and had been voting with the Free Soilers and strong antislavery Whigs in Congress, where he was destined to be the leader of the Republicans through the stormy war and reconstruction periods. David Wilmot and his more conservative neighbor, Galusha A. Grow, the one soon to be Republican Senator and the other Speaker of the National House of Representatives, abandoned their Democratic associations and placed themselves in the party of their sympathizers. The old abolitionists saw the fruition of their hitherto cheerless endeavors now justified by the grasping demands of the South. Governor Johnston, who had been the candidate of the American party for Vice-President, carried with him the great body of his associates, who were willing for the present to sink their much loved issues. All of the Whigs but the most conservative, under the leadership of Andrew G. Curtin, soon to be governor, were found in the ranks. There was a general combination of all elements opposed to Democracy, which now stood in the South unequivocally for slavery and in the North for non-interference.