May-June. fugitive-slave act was most detested. As summer and while approached, arrests were made in various Northern cities, New York and Syracuse, for instance, popular excitement over the Kansas-Nebraska infamy approached its culmination; but nowhere was the excitement produced so great as in sedate Boston. The New-England mind scorns an unrighteous action, even when statute law permits of it. Anthony Burns, a runaway from Virginia, betrayed his new home and hiding-place in a letter which fell into the hands of one of the master class in that State, and was communicated to a slave-hunter. The hunter came to Boston, tried to persuade Burns to return peaceably, and finding he would not be coaxed back to bondage, brought the process of law to bear upon him by a well-laid plan. It was Boston anniversary-week when Burns's arrest May 24 and arraignment took place; thousands of the June 2. rural clergy and laity were in attendance upon the various meetings; and an obscure negro, of whom the Boston agitators had never heard before, roused humane sentiment to the deepest demonstration. On the side of the law were soon arrayed writs, lawyers, the slave commissioner, bayonets, cannon, and a United States vessel; on that of liberty, Faneuil Hall and the Boston pulpit. A riot broke out in the night following this arrest, to quell which a company of marines had to be called from the Charlestown navy yard, and a detachment of State militia besides. An overflowing crowd filled "the cradle of liberty," where inflammatory speeches were made by Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker. The latter, in a Sunday sermon, preached presently the gospel of resistance. For a week the Puritan city was distracted between the duty of submission to rulers and Federal law and the wish to drive slave-hunters from the soil of Massachusetts. The granite court-house, within a few rods of which the humble victim had been arrested about sundown and carried bodily into its waiting walls, was beleaguered as though an emperor were confined there. A night rescue, attempted too rashly, failed for want of numbers. 1854. BURNS SENT BACK TO SLAVERY. 295 Meanwhile Commissioner Edward G. Loring, who held in addition the State office of county judge of probate, conducted his hearing with all the decorum and prolixity that so simple a statute case admitted. The trial was prolonged into a new week, soldiers and a "marshal's guard" of armed ruffians taking possession of a court-house for this paltry business, which belonged rather to the most solemn judicial courts of the State. On the 2d June. of June, Loring decided that Burns was a fugitive and must be sent back to slavery. People were restrained by this time from rash resistance; but the feeling was deep and intense in this city, in the State, and throughout all New England. Since the rendition of Sims here, three years before, a great change had come over the political feeling of the State where Webster once dominated, and his compromise was felt already a failure. Stores were closed and festooned in black, bells tolled, and indignant citizens with suppressed emotions swelled the crowd on State street, across which had been suspended a huge coffin, and flags with Union down. The vile procession moved, with a field-piece in front, and the poor black was escorted with military pomp from the gloomy precincts of Court square to Long wharf, where he was put on board a steamer and started on the voyage to Norfolk. "Shame! shame!" and hisses went up from the crowd as the soldiery made its brief march.* This was the last slave ever carried off from Boston soil, and Massachusetts was soon occupied, with other Northern States, in framing personal-liberty bills, whose object was to obstruct fugitive-slave process by every available means not plainly unconstitutional. And the movement in this commonwealth gained constant headway to force the obnoxious Loring out of his probate judgeship by address to the legislature. He had not dealt with this case dishon * Newspapers of the day; 1 Adams's R. H. Dana, c. 14. The master to whom Burns was surrendered treated him not unkindly, having once gained the point which he had in view, by vindicating his rights under the Federal law. Burns's freedom was presently purchased, and he returned to the North once more. orably; but, by holding two such commissions of the judicial sort, he undertook to serve two masters, and Massachusetts would not tolerate the idea that any one holding an office of honor or emolument under her should earn the blood-money of slave-hunters. 1853. December. Foreign relations deserve some brief attention. In Mexico, Santa Anna was once more President, that citizen of vicissitudes, whose wondrous energy kept the plucked republic from lapsing into anarchy. To him Gadsden, our newly appointed minister, had preAugust. sented his credentials, with assurance of friendly feelings which the Mexican President reciprocated. Troubles, however, had already broken out upon the frontier line marked by the Guadalupe-Hidalgo treaty. Indians here pursued their atrocities; and, in the neighborhood of El Paso, an armed conflict had lately taken place between Americans and Mexicans, who accused one another of cattle-stealing. Having in view a route, which some of our citizens projected, for running a Pacific railway through the valley of the Gila, Gadsden, in December, concluded with Santa Anna a treaty proposing a new and more southerly boundary. President Pierce transmitted this treaty to the Senate, and in April it was ratified with amendments by a close vote. The extent of territory to be thus acquired, which embraced originally an immense tract of about thirty-nine million acres in Chihuahua and Sonora, was cut down one half, and the sum to be paid to Mexico was reduced from twenty to ten million dollars. Mexico having accepted these modifications, the treaty was finally ratified and proclaimed on the 30th of June. By June 30. the terms of this new cession, various provisions of the original treaty of peace with Mexico were abrogated; and, while satisfaction for the Garay and other private claims was ignored, the Mexican grant of 1853 for a railroad route across the isthmus of Tehuantepec was recognized and protected, so that the government of the United States might interpose protection on its own 1854. April. 1854. MEXICO AND CUBA. 297 behalf.* Congress, at its first session, appropriated the money needful for this purchase, and incorporated the new acquisition for the time being with the territory of New Mexico.t May. The Crimean war, involving France and England early this year, quickened the impulse of the more ardent among our slavery expansionists at the South to seize the sway of the neighboring gulf region and West Indies. Let us get this region," was the argument of an administration press in South Carolina, "and we cannot only, if the South unite, preserve domestic servitude, but we can defy the power of the world." General Quitman, ardent and quixotic to the end of his life, had, in 1853, visited his native village on the Hudson, where he made stirring appeals to the simple populace to preserve "our glorious Union," by respecting the "reserved rights" of the States; at the same time that the secret object of his journey thither through large Atlantic cities was to raise funds for a new filibustering enterprise to Cuba, the plan he had never ceased. to cherish. Filibustering against Lower California and Sonora was planned at San Francisco that same year by William Walker, another visionary, whose aim was Southern aggrandizement. He sailed in October with his expedition down the Pacific coast, and landed at La Paz on the 4th of November, where he made the Mexican governor prisoner, and assumed to be President of the new Republic, proclaiming to the inhabitants of Lower California that rescue from evils which tyrants habitually profess 1853. 10 U. S. Stats. at Large, 1031. Some scandal of bribery attache l to Gadsden's negotiations with Santa Anna. Gadsden guarded the transaction with great secrecy, bringing to Washington the original treaty in person, and carrying it back as amended. A private letter from him, which soon found its way into print, shows that he felt much displeased with the alterations made in his treaty, which he had origi nally intended should be of liberal benefit for the expansion of the South and her social institutions. † Acts June 29, 1854, and August 5, 1854. Southern Standard, Charleston, S. C. § 2 Claiborne's Quitman, 193. 1854. to intend at the outset. A few weeks found his crusade in difficulties; the expected reinforcements failed to arrive, his few followers deserted, and he was forced to retreat with a little band in which officers far outnumbered the enlisted men. After various skirmishes with Mexicans and devious wanderings, May. Walker, in May, reached the State line of California, and surrendered himself and his command to a detachment of United States troops. This failure, together with the Gadsden settlement, put an end to invasions of Mexican territory for the present; but it was not the last of filibuster Walker. Southern expansionists were most intent at this time upon acquiring Cuba. They did not realize how strong a barrier of opposing sentiment they were already rearing in the Northern States by their course in the KansasNebraska iniquity. England and France (writes Stephens imperiously) have set their heads against the policy of that island towards us; we cannot permit them to go on with their policy of filling it with Africans; "we must and will have it."* But finding the President vacillating and perplexed upon the subject, the GeorMay-June. gian was soon disgusted; he did not believe the administration intended to do anything favoring Cuban acquisition, and he doubted if it had the nerve to take the indispensable steps for accomplishment.† The new President, indeed, was personally well-disposed to the cherished cause of Southern expansion; his repeated utterances in public evinced such a disposition, and the Gadsden treaty was a first, and not the only proof, he gave of his favor. But our Granite State paragon had not the audacious cunning of a Jackson, who had facilitated the Texan robbery while professing to look on as an impartial spectator. Kansas-Nebraska, too, was a heavy and an unexpected load in his panniers as he crouched, like an Issachar, between two burdens. Marcy and the old-school Democracy kept foreign affairs from extravagance. Upon one point, * Johnston's A. H. Stephens, 276-278. † Ibid. |