His opposition to slavery led him more than once
from theoretical controversy to physical struggle. "We



THE KIDNAPPRBS. 107

baye mentioned the painful impression wbich the passing
of the Fugitive Slave Law produced from one end of the
Northern States to another. The able statesmen of the
South had not foreseen this, at least in the degree in
which it showed itself from the very first. When you
have hardened yourself in disdaining the sympathetic
affections of human nature, you forget that in other
people they may still remain very vivid, and you no longer
count them among the serious forces whose power of re-
sistance you have to encounter. Imagine the inexpress-
ible anguish which suddenly seized thousands of coloured
people who had long lived peacefully in the towns and
villages of the North, not much loved by the white popu-
lation, but far more at their ease in the open atmosphere
of liberty than in the old house of bondage. Many of
them had got together a little property, had married, had
done well, and that honestly. All of them laboured and
freely filled functions, subaltern indeed, but not so badly
remunerated, and which a proud Yankee would have been
unwilling to undertake. They were domestics, clerks,
shoemakers, tailors, &c. Like the whites, they were pro-
tected by the law ; they could procure for their children
the benefits of education, and if white society was all but
hermetically sealed against them. Christian charity min-
istered to their necessities. But the infamous law once
passed, everything was changed as if by a clap of thunder.
