Читать книгу From Dixie to Canada - H. U. Johnson - Страница 13

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Ten years and more had passed; the Ellicottville note had been long settled; Jo had laid aside his mission as a lecturer and gone into business in Syracuse, N. Y., where he owned a pleasant home and had a family of intelligent children attending the public school; New York State, like the country at large, had been convulsed over the slavery question, and the city of his adoption had become a town of intensely Abolition sentiment. As the outgrowth of the slavery agitation there had come the enactment of the “Fugitive Slave Law,” as it was popularly, or rather unpopularly called, by means of which the South thought to render imperative the rendition of their runaway slaves. But they had counted without their host. Though successful in cracking their whips over the heads of Northern law-makers in the Capitol, the great mass of the people of the free states, no matter what their political affiliations, felt outraged at the idea of being converted into a set of legally constituted slave-hunters. Few places more excited the ire of the chivalry than Syracuse, and the threat was defiantly made that if another anti-slavery convention was held in the city it should be enlivened by the seizure of a fugitive of whom a test case could be made.

Not to be thus intimidated, a call for such a convention was issued and at the appointed time commenced. Whilst the delegates were organizing in the old Market Hall, in a cooper shop in another part of the city, all unconscious of danger, a colored man named Jerry, who had some years before escaped from slavery, was busy engaged at his labor, when he was suddenly pounced upon by a marshal and his deputies from Rochester, and, after a brave resistance, overpowered, manacled and thrown into a cart secured for that purpose, and hurried away to the commissioner’s office, closely guarded. The news of the arrest spread like wild-fire, and soon the streets were thronged with excited people. A man rushed into the convention and called out: “Mr. President a fugitive has been arrested and they are trying to hurry him away.” Without motion, the convention adjourned, and the delegates and attendants were added to the throng already in the street. The uproar was equal to that, when, for the “space of two hours,” the people cried, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians,” but more concentrated, and the cause of coming together better understood.

Jerry was hurried into the commissioner’s office, the lower door to which was heavily barred and the upper one securely bolted, so that it was with difficulty that his council and more immediate friends obtained admission.

The court once opened, within there was contention, parley, quibble and delay until twilight fell; without, the building was immediately surrounded by fugitives who had found an asylum in and about the city, and free colored people, among whom Jo Norton towered like Saul among his brethren, and beyond these an immense multitude of citizens who had stood waiting all the afternoon of that eventful day, manifesting no disposition to retire.

When it was announced that the court had adjourned for supper, it was soon evident that the decisive hour had come. A heavy timber was lifted to the shoulders of some sturdy negroes, and using the temporary space accorded them, at the watchword “Jo” they hurled it with such force against the door that bars and hinges gave way, and Norton, crowbar in hand, at the head of a storming column entered the stairway hall. The marshal was a man of nerve and disclaimed against any attempt on the inner door, but in vain. A few vigorous blows of the crowbar forced it open; there was the sharp report of a pistol succeeded by a quick blow of the bar, and Jo unharmed, stood master of the situation, whilst the right arm of the marshal hung useless at his side. The posse scattered, the marshal saving himself by jumping from the second story window and skulking away in the dark; Jerry, who had been very roughly treated, was unloosed, and by daylight was well on his way to Canada, whilst the convention resumed its deliberations the next day amid the congratulations of many who before had looked upon its purpose with indifference or absolute opposition.

As for Jo, though defying slave-hunters and their hirelings as such, having now arrayed himself by an act of violence against the government, he took the advice of judicious friends, and soon removed to Canada, where for years he was an esteemed citizen, and a friend and adviser of those who came to his locality as fugitives.