Results of the Fugitive Slave Acts History of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 Personal
Diary Accounts of Fugitive Slaves Underground Railroad Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 Memoirs Harriet Tubman Essay
Excerpt from Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl:
About the time that I reentered the Bruce family, an event occurred of disastrous
import to the colored people. The slave Hamlin, the first fugitive slave that came under the new law, was given up by the
bloodhounds of the north to the bloodhounds of the south. It was the beginning of a reign of terror to the colored population.
The great city rushed on in its whirl of excitement, taking no note of the "short and simple annals of the poor." But while
fashionables were listening to the thrilling voice of Jenny Lind in Metropolitan Hall, the thrilling voices of poor hunted
colored people went up, in an agony of supplication, to the Lord, from Zion's church. Many families, who had lived in the
city for twenty years, fled from it now. Many a poor washerwoman, who, by hard labor, had made herself a comfortable home,
was obliged to sacrifice her furniture, bid a hurried farewell to friends, and seek her fortune among strangers in Canada.
Many a wife discovered a secret she had never known before -- that her husband was a fugitive, and must leave her to insure
his own safety. Worse still, many a husband discovered that his wife had fled from slavery years ago, and as "the child follows
the condition of its mother," the children of his love were liable to be seized and carried into slavery. Every where, in
those humble homes, there was consternation and anguish. But what cared the legislators of the "dominant race" for the blood
they were crushing out of trampled hearts?
Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Boston, 1861.
Recommended Reading: The Underground Railroad
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