Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T18:31:46.174Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Jerry McHenry Rescue and the Growth of Northern Antislavery Sentiment during the 1850s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Jayme A. Sokolow
Jayme A. Sokolow
Affiliation:
Jayme A. Sokolow teaches in the Department of History, Texas Tech University, Box 4529, Lubbock, Texas 79409.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In his second annual message to the Congress on 2 December 1851, President Millard Fillmore defended his administration's enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law. Although “lawless and violent mobs” had resisted federal officers trying to enforce the statute, he happily noted that resistance was sporadic and ineffectual:

I congratulate you and the country upon the general acquiescence in these measures of peace which has been exhibited in all parts of the Republic … [T]he spirit of reconciliation which has been manifested in regard to them [the 1850 compromise measures] in all parts of the country has removed doubts and uncertainties in the minds of thousands of good men concerning the duration of our popular institutions and given renewed assurance that our liberty and our Union may subsist together for the benefit of this and succceding generations.

Fillmore also received support from both the Democrats and Whigs; at their national conventions in 1852 they pledged to honor the Compromise of 1850 and earnestly hoped that sectional differences would wane.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , December 1982 , pp. 427 - 445
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Richardson, James D., Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789–1897, 10 vols. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1907), 5, 137Google Scholar.

2 Ibid., 5, 138–39.

3 Porter, Kirk H. and Johnson, Donald Bruce, eds., National Party Platforms, 1840–1860 (Urbana, Ill.: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1961), pp. 17, 21Google Scholar.

4 Weiss, John, Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker, Minister of the Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society, Boston, 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton, 1864), 1, 102Google Scholar.

5 Campbell, Stanley W., The Slave Catchers: Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, 1850–1860 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), pp. 199–202, 207Google Scholar.

6 Greeley, Horace, The American Conflict: A History, 2 vols. (Washington D.C.: National Tribune, 1902), 1, 210–11Google Scholar.

7 Campbell, pp. 49–95, 207.

8 Cover, Robert M., Justice Accused: Antislavery and the Judicial Process (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1975), pp. 159–91Google Scholar; Wiecek, William M., The Sources of Antislavery Constitutionalism in America, 1760–1848 (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1977), pp. 249–90Google Scholar; Morris, Thomas D., Free Men All: The Personal Liberty Laws of the North, 1780–1861 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1974), pp. 130–218Google Scholar; Rosenberg, Norman L., “Personal Liberty Laws and the Sectional Crisis: 1850–1861,” Civil War History, 17 (1971), 25–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Remarks of James W. Stone in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, April 13, 1855 (Boston: n.p., 1855)Google Scholar.

10 Pease, Jane H. and Pease, William H., “Confrontation and Abolition in the 1850s,” Journal of American History, 58 (1972), 923–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; They Who Would Be Free: Blacks' Search for Freedom, 1830–1861 (New York: Atheneum, 1974), pp. 233–50Google Scholar; Dillon, Merton C., The Abolitionists: The Growth of a Dissenting Minority (Dekalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois Univ. Press, 1974), pp. 219–46Google Scholar; Mabee, Carleton, Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists From 1830 Through the Civil War (New York: Macmillan, 1970), pp. 185–332Google Scholar; Perry, Lewis, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government of God in Antislavery Thought (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1973), pp. 231–94Google Scholar.

11 For a pioneering narrative account of the Jerry rescue, see Galpin, W. Freeman, “The Jerry Rescue,” New York History, 26 (1945), 19–34Google Scholar. Three brief, modern accounts of the Jerry rescue differ widely in their narratives and analyses. See Dillon, pp. 186–87; Quarles, Benjamin, Black Abolitionists (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 209–11Google Scholar; Stewart, James Brewer, Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery (New York: Hill and Wang, 1976), pp. 124, 154–55Google Scholar.

12 Congressional Globe, 36 Congress, 2 Session, 663.

13 National Anti-Slavery Standard, 26 Aug. 1850.

14 Syracuse, Star, 14 10 1850Google Scholar; May, Samuel Joseph Jr, Emerson, B., and Mumford, Thomas J., eds., Memoir of Samuel Joseph May (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1873), p. 218Google Scholar; Loguen, Jermain W., The Rev. J. W. Loguen, as a Slave and as a Freeman (Syracuse: J. G. K. Truair & Co., 1859), pp. 368–69Google Scholar; Sperry, Earl E., The Jerry Rescue (Syracuse: Onondaga Historical Association, 1924), pp. 18–19Google Scholar. This narrative study contains many eyewitness accounts of the events surrounding the rescue.

15 New York Tribune, 12 Oct. 1850.

16 Loguen, pp. 391–92.

17 Ibid., p. 395.

18 Ibid., pp. 396–98; May, Emerson, and Mumford, p. 218; Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 3 vols. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1872), 2, 306Google Scholar.

19 The Liberator, 21 March 1851.

20 May, Samuel Joseph, Some Recollections of Our Anti-Slavery Conflict (Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co., 1869), pp. 361–62Google Scholar; Anti-Slavery Bugle, 5 April 1851.

21 The Liberator, 25 Oct. 1850.

22 W. H. Burleigh to Gerrit Smith, 17 Oct. 1850, in Harlow, Ralph Volney, Gerrit Smith, Philanthropist and Reformer (New York: H. Holt, 1939), pp. 289–90Google Scholar. Burleigh was a staunch defender of higher law doctrines, believing that “every true lover of humanity is bound to refuse it [the Fugitive Slave Law] obedience, and is bound to go on persevering in obedience to the higher law.” See Anti-Slavery Bugle, 12 July 1851.

23 Webster, Daniel, The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster, 18 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1903), 4, 231Google Scholar.

24 Ibid., 13, 435.

23 Syracuse, Star, 24, 27 05 1851Google Scholar; May, pp. 373–374. For the full text of Webster's Syracuse addresses, see Webster, 13, 408–28.

26 Ibid., 13, 419–20.

27 Syracuse, Star, 28 05 1851Google Scholar.

28 Baker, Anne Kathleen, A History of Old Syracuse, 1654–1899 (Fayetteville, N.Y.: Manlius Publishing Company, 1941), p. 109Google Scholar; Syracuse, Herald, 1 11 1899Google Scholar; May, p. 374; Loguen, , Rev. J. W. Loguen, p. 400Google Scholar; The Liberator, 10 Oct. 1851; National Intelligencer, 7 Oct. 1851.

29 May, Samuel Joseph, The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1861), p. 20Google Scholar; May, , Emerson, , and Mumford, , Memoir of May, p. 219Google Scholar; Syracuse, Herald, 1 11 1899Google Scholar; Syracuse, Star, 4 10 1851Google Scholar; Syracuse, Daily Journal, 16 10 1851Google Scholar.

30 Loguen, pp. 398–408; May, Emerson, and Mumford, pp. 219–20; May, pp. 374–75; Syracuse, Herald, 1 11 1899Google Scholar; Syracuse, Star, 3 10 1851Google Scholar.

31 May, Emerson and Mumford, p. 220; May, p. 376.

32 Loguen, p. 409.

33 May, Emerson, and Mumford, p. 220; May, pp. 377–78; The Liberator, 10 Oct. 1851.

34 Strong, Gurney S., Early Landmarks of Syracuse (Syracuse: Times Publishing Co., 1894), pp. 280–85Google Scholar; Baker, p. 111; May Emerson, and Mumford, p. 221; Loguen, p. 411; Syracuse, Star, 15 10 1851Google Scholar; Syracuse, Standard, 15 10 1851Google Scholar.

35 Syracuse, Star, 3, 4, 5, 8 10 1851Google Scholar. The sheriff, according to Jermain Loguen, was quite sympathetic to the rescue. During the afternoon of 1 October he confidently told one of Jerry's supporters, “I am a public officer and must keep the peace – but betwixt you and me there is no difficulty.” See Loguen, p. 410.

36 Baker, pp. 111–12; Strong, pp. 281–86; May, Emerson, and Mumford, pp. 220–21; Loguen, pp. 417–18; Ward, Samuel Ringgold, Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro: His Anti-Slavery Labours in the United States, Canada, & England (London: J. Snow, 1855), pp. 117–28Google Scholar.

37 May, , Recollections, pp. 378–79Google Scholar; Loguen, pp. 422–24; The Liberator, 24 Oct. 1851; Frederick Douglass' Paper, 8 April 1852, 4 Feb., 4 March 1853.

38 Anti-Slavery Bugle, 25 Sept. 1852; Frederick Douglass' Paper, 29 Oct. 1852. By 19 November 1851 a federal grand jury in Buffalo had indicted twenty-six people for participating in the Jerry Rescue. In January of 1853 Enoch Reed was found guilty but died while an appeal was being heard. W. S. Salmon was tried and acquitted and a jury was divided on two other defendants. The remaining cases were postponed and later dropped because it proved impossible to empanel a jury which had no decided opinions about the Fugitive Slave Law. The rescuers had Henry Allen, the United States marshall who arrested Jerry, indicted on a charge of kidnapping; he was quickly acquitted because the jury agreed Allen was legally executing a Federal law. For accounts of the indictments and the trials, see the National Intelligencer, 21 Nov. 1851; Samuel Joseph May to William Lloyd Garrison, 15 Oct. 1851, in Garrison, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison: The Story of His Life Told by his Children, 4 vols. (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1894), 3, 335Google Scholar; Loguen, pp. 426–42; Trial of Henry W. Allen, U.S. Deputy Marshall, for Kidnapping, with Arguments of Counsel & Charge of Justice Marvin, on the Constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Law, in the Supreme Court of New York (Syracuse: Daily Journal Office, 1852)Google Scholar.

39 Brown, Richard Maxwell, Strain of Violence: Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1975), pp. 91–143Google Scholar; Feldberg, Michael, The Philadelphia Riots of 1844: A Study of Ethnic Conflict (Westport Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1975)Google Scholar; Oaks, Dallin H. and Hill, Marvin S., Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith (Urbana, Ill.: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1975)Google Scholar; Warner, Sam Bass Jr, The Private City: Philadelphia in Three Periods of Its Growth (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968), pp. 125–57Google Scholar; Weinbaum, Paul O., Mobs and Demagogues: The New York Response to Collective Violence in the Early 19th Century (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Billington, Ray A., The Protestant Crusade, 1800–1860: A Study of the Origins of American Natavism (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1938)Google Scholar; Grimsted, David, “Rioting in Its Jacksonian Setting,” American Historical Review, 77 (1972), 361–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Eaton, Clement, “Mob Violence in the Old South,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 29 (1942), 351–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Basler, Roy P., ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 9 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1953–1955), 1, 109Google Scholar.

41 Feldberg, Michael, The Turbulent Era: Riot and Disorder in Jacksonian America (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1980)Google Scholar.

42 Richards, Leonard L., “Gentlemen of Property and Standing”: Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970)Google Scholar. For a similar argument see Ratner, Lorman A., “Northern Concern for Social Order as Cause of Rejecting Anti-Slavery, 1831–1840,” The Historian, 28 (1965), 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Powder Keg: Northern Opposition to the Anti-Slavery Movement, 1831–1840 (New York: Basic Books, 1968)Google Scholar.

43 Richards, pp. 134–50. I have excluded considering the New York City riot of 1836 because, as Richards admits, it was atypical of antebellum anti-abolitionist violence.

44 Aronson, Sidney, Status and Kinship in the Higher Civil Service: Standards of Selection in the Administrations of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1964)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Aronson constructed a two-tiered classification of high- and middle-ranking occupations. The highest category includes occupations such as merchant, banker, bank cashier, landed gentry, college president, lawyer, professor, minister, and doctor. The middle category involves occupations such as clerk, shopkeeper, editor, tavernkeeper, and teacher. Richards also uses the Aronson classification system.

45 Ward, pp. 429–34; Loguen, pp. 133–226.

46 Richards, pp. 134–50. Gerald Sorin, in his study of antebellum New York abolitionists, also discovered that they included many farmers, manufacturers, and artisans who pursued careers requiring broadly applicable skills not dependent upon traditionally determined status. See Sorin, , The New York Abolitionists: A Case Story of Political Radicalism (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1971)Google Scholar.

47 The Anti-Slavery Record, 2 (07 1836), 73–82Google Scholar.

48 American Anti-Slavery Society, Fourth Annual Report (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1837), pp. 57–60Google Scholar.

49 May, Samuel Joseph, Speech of the Rev. Samuel J. May, to the Convention of Citizens of Onondaga County (Syracuse: Agan & Summers, Printers, 1851), p. 2Google Scholar.

50 Ibid., p. 18.

51 Sewell, Richard H., John P. Hale and the Politics of Abolition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 Cookingham, Henry J., History of Oneida County, New York, from 1700 to the Present Time, 2 vols. (Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1912), 1, 252–54Google Scholar.

53 For excellent analyses of the slave power conspiracy concept, see Nye, Russel B., Fettered Freedom (Urbana, Ill.: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1972), pp. 282–315Google Scholar; Davis, David Brion, The Slave Power Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style (Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1969)Google Scholar; The Fear of Conspiracy: Images of Un-American Subversion from the Revolution to the Present (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1971), pp. 102–48Google Scholar.

54 National Anti-Slavery Standard, 19, 26 Jan., 2, 9, 16 Feb. 1861; American Anti-Slavery Society, Twenty-Eighth Annual Report (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1861), pp. 182–88Google Scholar; May, , Recollections, pp. 389–95Google Scholar.