the law in any part of the Union, is equally apparent. In pursuance of this section, Congress passed a law during the administration of President Washington, providing that the owner of any runaway slave might arrest him, take him before a judge of either the Federal or State Courts, and prove by oral testimony or by affidavit that the person arrested owed service to the claimant under the laws of the State from which he had escaped, and thereupon it was made the duty of the judge to give a certificate that such proof had been made, and the claimant could remove the fugitive to the State from which he had escaped. The law also provided a penalty of $500.00 for obstructing its execution or concealing the fugitive with knowledge that he was such.
Thus the law remained until the year 1850. Meanwhile the moral sentiment of the North became aroused; the liberty party was organized, the underground railroad flourished, and northern men and women refused to act as slave-catchers, or assist in perpetuating the crime of slavery. In proportion as the anti-slavery feeling grew at the North, the devotion of the South to the "divine institution" seemed to become more determined; the constant stream of fugitives that passed through the Northern States to Canada, and the evergrowing difficulty which the slave-holder experienced in attempting to assert his rights in his human chattels in the North, alarmed the people of the South, and they demanded greater guarantees and more certain remedies for the retaking of their runaway property. Finally an act was passed in 1850 which was intended to meet the demands of the South. It placed the whole machinery for the recaption of runaway slaves exclusively in the hands of the Federal officers. It provided for a hearing before a United
