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The Jerry McHenry Rescue and the Growth of Northern Antislavery Sentiment during the1850sAuthor(s): Jayme A. SokolowSource: Journal of American Studies, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Dec., 1982), pp. 427-445Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British Association for AmericanStudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27554201Accessed: 20/02/2010 20:05
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The Jerry McHenry Rescue and the Growth of Northern
Antislavery Sentiment during the 1850s JAYME A. SOKOLOW
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"1 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 un
certainties 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 succeeding generations.2
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.3
While abolitionists such as Theodore Parker denounced the Fugitive Slave
Jayme A. Sokolow teaches in the Department of History, Texas Tech University, Box 4529, Lubbock, Texas 79409.
1 James D. Richardson, Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents,
1789-189J, 10 vols. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1907), 5, 137.
2 Ibid., 5, 138-39.
3 Kirk H. Porter and Donald Bruce Johnson, eds., National Party Platforms, 1840 1860 (Urbana, 111.: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1961), pp. 17, 21.
Amer. Stud. 16, 3, 427-45 Printed in Great Britain
0021-8758/82/BAAS-3005 $01.50 ? 1982 Cambridge University Press
428 Jay me A. So\olow
Law and promised "to rescue any fugitive slave from the hands of any officer who attempts to return him to bondage,"4 even antislavery advocates
admitted that between the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska
Act of 1854 most northerners were willing to obey the law in order to
mollify the South and prevent the disruption of the Union. During this four
year period the Fugitive Slave Law was effectively enforced throughout the
northern and border states; only nine accused fugitives were rescued from
federal custody as compared with one hundred and sixty slaves who were
remanded by federal tribunals or returned without due process.5 As Horace
Greeley wrote about the early 1850s, most Americans desired "peace and
prosperity, and were nowise inclined to cut each other's throats and burn
each other's houses in a general quarrel concerning (as they regarded it) only the status of negroes."6 Only after the Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the
Missouri Compromise did northern public opinion become more hostile
toward the Fugitive Slave Law. But the federal government continued
successfully to enforce the statute; throughout the decade 82.3 percent of all
accused runaways were remanded to their owners.7
The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law culminated a decade of frustration
for the antislavery crusade. Although the abolitionist movement gained adherents during the 1840s, moral suasion, political agitation, and legal action failed to contain or diminish slavery as the Mexican War and the
Compromise of 1850 signalled the apparent growth of the peculiar institu
tion. The Constitution also was slipping away from the abolitionists. Federal
and state court decisions were decidedly adverse to the novel arguments of
antislavery lawyers and the judicial system actively promoted the rendition
of fugitive slaves.8 Abolitionists might complain that by "a dash of the
Commissioner's pen" an accused runaway
was transformed from "a human
4 John Weiss, Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parser, Minister of the Twenty
Eighth Congregational Society, Boston, 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton, 1864), I, 102.
5 Stanley W. Campbell, The Slave Catchers: Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law,
1850-1860 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), pp. 199-202, 207. 6 Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History, 2 vols. (Washington D.C. :
National Tribune, 1902), 1, 210-11. 7
Campbell, pp. 49-95, 207. 8 Robert M. Cover, Justice Accused: Antislavery and the Judicial Process (New Haven
and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1975), pp. 159-91; William M. Wiecek, The Sources
of Antislavery Constitutionalism in America, 1760?1848 (Ithaca: Cornell Univ.
Press, 1977), pp. 249-90; Thomas D. Morris, Free Men All: The Personal Liberty Laws of the North, iy8o?i86i (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1974),
pp. 130-218; Norman L. Rosenberg, "Personal Liberty Laws and the Sectional
Crisis: 1850?1861," Civil War History, 17 (1971), 25?45.
Growth of Northern Antislavery Sentiment during the 1850s 429
being into property,"9 but most Americans in the early 1850s concurred with
the measure. The public's seeming acquiescence and the federal govern ment's unsparing efforts to return fugitives goaded even many pacifist abolitionists into unprecedented acts of civil disobedience and violence. They became more militant and openly defended disunion, d?fiance of the slave
power conspiracy, and violence against the hated new Fugitive Slave Law.10
Perhaps the most dramatic and influential early instance of resistance was
the rescue of the runaway slave Jerry McHenry in Syracuse, New York, on
1 October 1851. This pro-abolitionist riot was a harbinger of growing northern opposition to the strident demands of the South and its northern
allies and also an illustration of the concomitant development of antislavery sentiment in the north during the decade before the Civil War.11
II
Because Syracuse was militantly opposed to slavery and the Fugitive Slave
Law, the city had already become a focus of national attention in the con
troversy surrounding the recent statute. Located in western New York, this
city of 21,901 whites and 370 blacks in 1850 was originally settled by a
stream of migrants from New England who brought with them their
churches, schools, and piety. "Almost every free state has its New England within its borders,"12 Vermont Senator Justin Morrill aptly observed.
Throughout the north and midwest these little New Englands were centers
of literacy, religion, reform and antislavery agitation. The larger cities, with
their commercial ties to the South and their growing immigrant populations, 9
Remarks of James W. Stone in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, April 13,
1855 (Boston: n.p., 1855). 10
Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, "Confrontation and Abolition in the 1850s,"
Journal of American History, 58 (1972), 923-37; They Who Would Be Free:
Blac\sy Search for Freedom, 1830-1861 (New York: Atheneum, 1974), pp. 233-50; Merton C. Dillon, The Abolitionists: The Growth of a Dissenting Minority (Dekalb,
111.: Northern Illinois Univ. Press, 1974), pp. 219-46; Carleton Mabee, Blac\ Free
dom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists From 1830 Through the Civil War (New York:
Macmillan, 1970), pp. 185-332; Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and
the Government of God in Antislavery Thought (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1973)5
pp. 231-94. 11 For a pioneering narrative account of the Jerry rescue, see W. Freeman Galpin,
"The Jerry Rescue," New Yor\ History, 26 (1945), 19-34. Three brief, modern
accounts of the Jerry rescue differ widely in their narratives and analyses. See
Dillon, pp. 186-87; Benjamin Quarles, Blac\ Abolitionists (New York: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 209-11; James Brewer Stewart, Holy Warriors: The
Abolitionists and American Slavery (New York: Hill and Wang, 1976), pp. 124,
154-55 12
Congressional Globe, 36 Congress, 2 Session, 663.
430 Jay me A. So\olow
tended to be more conservative, but in western New York's burned-over
district New Englanders settled in large numbers and supported the abolition
ist crusade.
While the Senate was debating the Fugitive Slave Law, Samuel Joseph
May, a transplanted New Englander and Syracuse's most famous pacifist and abolitionist, attended a Fugitive Slave Convention in the nearby Finger Lakes village of Cazenovia where abolitionists pledged to aid runaway slaves
in preserving their precarious freedom.13 Only eight days after Fillmore had
signed the Law, a local Syracuse newspaper called for a public meeting to
disscuss the new enactment.14 On 4 October Samuel R. Ward, a distin
guished black orator, denounced the statute before an estimated five hundred
people who met in the Syracuse city hall.15 He was followed by the Reverend
Jermain W. Loguen, a fugitive slave who had studied at the Oneida Institute
and had become a respected Syracuse teacher and minister. In his lecture,
Loguen dramatically portrayed the consequences of the law for both blacks
and whites :
And do you think that I can be taken away from you and my wife and children,
and be a slave in Tennessee? ... This hellish enactment has precipitated
the
conclusion that white men must live in dishonorable submission, and colored men
be slaves, or they
must give their
physical as well as intellectual powers to the
defense of human rights. ... I don't respect this law
? I don't fear it ? I won't
obey it.16
By the conclusion of the speech everyone was standing and screaming "the
chair! the chair!" Alfred H. Hovey, the Democratic mayor who was presid
ing over the meeting, immediately made a brief but persuasive speech
linking the defense of human liberty with civil disobedience. He vowed that
the "colored man must be protected
- he must be secure
among us. . . . We
are right - this is a righteous and holy cause."17 The Business Committee
supported these speeches by reporting thirteen resolutions denouncing the
Fugitive Slave Law, President Fillmore, and Daniel Webster. A biracial
Vigilance Committee was created to insure that no Syracuse fugitive slaves
were deprived of their liberty. Any member who believed a runaway was
13 National Anti-Slavery Standard, 26 Aug. 1850. 14
Syracuse Star, 14 Oct. 1850; Samuel Joseph May, Jr, B. Emerson, and Thomas J.
Mumford, eds., Memoir of Samuel Joseph May (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1873),
p. 218; Jermain W. Loguen, The Rev. J. W. Loguen, as a Slave and as a Freeman
(Syracuse: J. G. K. Truair & Co., 1859), pp. 368-69; Earl E. Sperry, The Jerry Rescue (Syracuse: Onondaga Historical Association, 1924), pp. 18-19. This narrative
study contains many eyewitness accounts of the events surrounding the rescue. 15 New Yor\ Tribune, 12 Oct. 1850. 16
Loguen, pp. 391?92. 17
Ibid., p. 395.
Growth of Northern Antislavery Sentiment during the 1850s 431
endangered should toll a special signal on the bell of the local Presbyterian church to alert the Committee, which presumably would meet quickly and
devise a rescue plan.18
For May,
as for many Syracuse citizens, the enact
ment of the Fugitive Slave Law marked a shift from moral suasion and
political action to explicit defiance and violent disobedience.
During the next year Syracuse remained a national center for opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law. In January 1851 George Thompson, a prominent
British abolitionist, was the featured speaker at an anti-Fugitive Slave Law
demonstration. Two months later May appeared at a local
antislavery conven
tion with five fugitive slaves who had been brought to his Church of the
Messiah, a Unitarian depot on the underground railroad. "Shall these
fugitives be taken from Syracuse?" He asked rhetorically. "No" responded the audience. "Will you defend with your lives?" "Yes," answered his
fellow abolitionists.19 And in the late spring William Lloyd Garrison led the
American Anti-slavery Society to Syracuse for three days of spirited meet
ings.20 May and other western New York abolitionists were confident that
Syracuse would defy the Fugitive Slave Law. "We must trample this
infamous law under foot," May asserted. "It will agitate the country, as it
never has been agitated before, and if we do right, it will hasten rather than
retard the consummation, of the antislavery reform."21 W. H. Burleigh,
another Syracuse abolitionist, agreed with May. In a letter to Gerrit Smith
he proudly noted his city's resistance to the law and accurately predicted how Syracuse would react to the Fillmore administration's determination to
enforce the statute. "The meetings held in this city on that subject have been
indeed great and good.
... It would be almost certain death to a slave-catcher
to appear, on his infernal mission in our streets. No fugitive can be taken
from our midst."22
Like other members of the Fillmore administration, Daniel Webster
believed that Syracuse provided an important test for the Fugitive Slave Law.
After the Compromise of 1850, he traveled throughout New England and 18
Ibid., pp. 396-98; May, Emerson, and Mumford, p. 218; Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 3 vols. (Boston: Houghton, Miiflin
and Co., 1872), 2, 306. 19 The Liberator, 21 March 1851. 20 Samuel Joseph May, Some Recollections of Our Anti-Slavery Conflict (Boston: Fields,
Osgood & Co., 1869), pp. 361-62; Anti-Slavery Bugle, 5 April 1851. 21 The Liberator, 25 Oct. 1850. 22 W. H. Burleigh to Gerrit Smith, 17 Oct. 1850, in Ralph Volney Harlow, Gerrit
Smith, Philanthropist and Reformer (New York: H. Holt, 1939), pp. 289?90.
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.
432 Jay me A. So\olow
New York arguing that "
there is but one all-absorbing question and that is
the preservation of the Union."23 Being convinced that the issue of slavery could not be settled until slaveholders were confident their property was
protected, he lashed out at the ''fanatical and factious abolitionists of the
north,"24 whose illegal actions threatened to destroy the harmony between
the sections. In Syracuse, where he spoke on 22 and 26 May 1851,25 he
denounced the abolitionists and issued a stern challenge :
I am a lawyer and I value my reputation
as a lawyer
more than anything else, and
I tell you, if men get together and declare a law of Congress shall not be executed in any case, and assemble in numbers to
prevent the execution of such a law, they are traitors, and are
guilty of treason, and bring upon themselves the penalties of
the law.
. . . Depend upon it, the law will be executed in its spirit, and to its letter. It will
be executed in all the great cities; here in Syracuse; in the midst of the next
Anti-slavery Convention, if the occasion shall arise; then we shall see what
becomes of their lives and their sacred honor.26
Webster's pious references to the Constitution were cheered but his remarks
about the Fugitive Slave Law aroused ominous murmurs of disapproval.27
Ill
The Fillmore administration's ability to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law was
tested by the events of 1 October 1851. Around noon, Jerry McHenry, a
mulatto working in a Syracuse cabinet shop, was seized and handcuffed by three deputy marshalls and a policeman who told him a warrant had been
issued for his arrest on suspicion of theft. When Jerry arrived at the United
States Commissioner's office, however, he was informed that charges had
been filed against him, under the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law, as an
escaped Missouri slave.28
McHenry had in fact been born of a slave mother in Buncombe County,
23 Daniel Webster, The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster, 18 vols. (Boston:
Little, Brown & Company, 1903), 4, 231. 2*
Ibid., 13, 435. 25
Syracuse Star, 24, 27 May 1851; May, pp. 373-74. For the full text of Webster's
Syracuse addresses, see Webster, 13, 408?28. 26
Ibid., 13, 419-20. 27
Syracuse Star, 28 May 1851. 28 Anne Kathleen Baker, A History of Old Syracuse, 1654-1899 (Fayetteville, N.Y.:
Manlius Publishing Company, 1941), p. 109; Syracuse Herald, 1 Sept. 1899; May,
p. 374; Loguen, Rev. J. W. Loguen, p. 400; The Liberator, 10 Oct. 1851; National
Intelligencer, 7 Oct. 1851.
Growth of Northern Antislavery Sentiment during the 1850s 433
North Carolina, around 1815. His family traveled throughout the South and
finally settled in Marion County, Missouri. There he learned to read and
became a skilled carpenter, farmer, and mechanic; his second owner con
sidered him a shrewd businessman. He probably left Missouri in 1843,
evading capture by his owner's son-in-law who unsuccessfully searched for
him in Chicago and Milwaukee. After his escape, he was sold on 8 July
1851 to John McReynolds, the man who was now initiating proceedings for
his return. Jerry's destination had been Canada, but Syracuse's economic
opportunities and racial toleration had so impressed him that he had remained
there and labored successively in a cooperage and cabinet shop. Bright and
likeable, he was known in the community as a
responsible worker.29
The first of October was an inopportune day to reclaim a fugitive slave in
Syracuse. The city was full of visitors; the Onondaga County Agricultural
Society was holding a fair and the local Liberty Party convention, filled with
a small but fiesty group of abolitionists, was in session at the Congregational Church. As the carriages containing Jerry and the officers approached the
courthouse, the news spread that the first arrest of a runaway slave had just occurred in Syracuse. When Charles A. Wheaton interrupted the Liberty
Party convention to announce Jerry's arrest, the abolitionists hurriedly
adjourned, rang the bell of the Presbyterian Church, and ran to the Com
missioner's office. May was finishing lunch when he heard the signal;
arriving at the scene of Jerry's arraignment, he was surprised to find a crowd
of about two thousand people outside angrily demanding the prisoner's release.
Inside, May discovered that the hearing had already begun. In the court
room were James Lear, a resident of Marion County, who had agreed to
obtain the arrest of McReynold's fugitive slave, the sheriff of Marion County, Samuel Smith, who had the deed of Jerry's sale, the Federal marshalls, some
interested spectators, and Commissioner Joseph F. Sabine. By one o'clock,
government counsels Joseph Loomis and James R. Lawrance, Jr had begun their arguments. Leonard Gibbs and Gerrit Smith acted as defense counsels.
Lear, a neighbor of McReynold's, testified that he knew the alleged fugitive from 1820 to 1840. Jerry's attorney Gibbs could only delay and obstruct as
Commissioner Sabine waived all objections aside. The defense lawyer wanted
an adjournment to better prepare his case; the Commissioner also rejected this argument but stopped the proceedings for half an hour while the court
looked for a larger room. Without this delay, Jerry probably would have 29 Samuel Joseph May, The Fugitive Slave I^aw and Its Victims (New York: American
Anti-Slavery Society, 1861), p. 20; May, Emerson, and Mumford, Memoir of May,
p. 219; Syracuse Herald, 1 Sept. 1899; Syracuse Star, 4 Oct. 1851; Syracuse Daily
Journal, 16 Oct. 1851.
434 Jay me A. So\olow
been convicted and sent back to Missouri. He realized that the judicial
proceedings inevitably would lead to a verdict of guilty and thus in despera tion he made a sudden dash for freedom. With the help of a sympathetic
spectator, Charles Merrick, he was shoved out the door and hurled down the
stairway, and then, still in his handcuffs, he staggered down the street.
Although a black man, Prince Jackson, tried to obstruct the police, he was
recaptured in a few minutes and taken back to the office in a dray. A large crowd followed the carriage but made no
attempt to rescue him as the arrest
ing officers shackled his legs and sat on him to prevent another escape.30 As a result of these events the crowd became enraged and probably would
have stormed the jail if May had not restrained them by advising the mob's
leaders to wait after dark when a rescue attempt surely would occur. The
sheriff met May, told him that Jerry was in a "perfect rage," and suggested that the Unitarian minister try to calm him. When May was alone with
Jerry, he comforted him and tried to give him hope. "Would you be calm
with these irons on you?" Jerry shouted back. "Take off these handcuffs, and then if I do not fight my way through these fellows . . . then you may
make me a slave." As Jerry continued to rant hysterically, May whispered,
"Jerry we are
going to rescue you; do be more
quiet." "How do I know
you can or will rescue me?" Jerry cried. May assured him that he would be
freed that night; Jerry then became more calm and lay down to rest.31
Meanwhile, Jerry's accusers and supporters
were planning
courses of
action. Commissioner Sabine and his associates decided to resume the hearing at five-thirty. While a large and noisy crowd continued to gather in the
square, the Vigilance Committee met at Dr. Hiram Hoyt's residence.
There twenty-seven men, including May, Ward, and Loguen, devised a
plan to rescue Jerry and hide him within the Syracuse city limits until things
quietened down. The Committee decided, in the words of Gerrit Smith, that
while Jerry might be freed," the moral effect of such an acquitted will be
nothing, to a bold and forceable rescue. A forceable rescue will demonstrate
the strength of public opinion against the possible legality of slavery and this
fugitive law in particular. It will honor Syracuse, and be a powerful example
everywhere."32 May agreed with this, giving strict orders that the police were
not to be injured. Perhaps because he feared violence, May did not participate
directly in the actual rescue.33
30 Loguen, pp. 398-408; May, Emerson, and Mumford, pp. 219-20; May, pp. 374-75;
Syracuse Herald, 1 Sept. 1899; Syracuse Star, 3 Oct. 1851. 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.
Growth of Northern Antislavery Sentiment during the 1850s 435
A second examination before Commissioner Sabine began promptly at
five-thirty. D. D. Hillis, Leroy Morgan, and Henry Sheldon replaced Gibbs
and Smith as counsels for Jerry. Lear, who had been sent from Missouri to
reclaim Jerry, began testifying again but was constantly interrupted by
questions from Hillis. The crowd outside the building also made the proceed
ings uncomfortable by drowning out the testimony and by throwing rocks
through the windows. Although chief deputy marshall Henry Allen wanted
to continue the hearing, the Commissioner prudently adjourned the court
until eight o'clock the next morning.
Following this adjournment, Sabine returned home while several of Jerry's defenders tried to calm the crowd. Hillis and Ward told them that Jerry
undoubtedly would be freed through the legal process; Mayor Horace
Wheaton and the police justice also attempted to disperse the gathering. While the crowd cheered the speeches, they remained outside the fugitive's
guarded room in the rear of the Commissioner's office. By eight o'clock the
angry mob had grown to about two thousand who continued to shout and
throw stones. When the members of the Vigilance Committee arrived, the
rescue began in earnest as the crowd assaulted the building with clubs, axes,
and iron rods which had conveniently had been left in front of Charles
Wheaton's hardware store.34
Fortunately for the abolitionists the militia never appeared. Although chief deputy marshall Allen did not know about the Vigilance Committee's
secret meetings, the presence of a large crowd outside the police office con
vinced him that he needed more manpower. Allen persuaded William C.
Gardiner, the county sheriff, to assemble the National Guards, the Syracuse Citizens Corps, and the Washington Artillery. When Charles Wheaton and
Colonel Origen Vanderburgh of the 51st Regiment heard about Gardner's
orders, they went to the National Guard armory and convinced the lieutenant
in command not to move his troops. Later Vanderburgh sent a written order
to the lieutenant, allegedly with the approval of the sheriff, discharging his
company. The lieutenant of the Syracuse Citizens Corps also received an
order to disband and complied about two hours before the rescue began. The Washington Artillery marched to City Hall Park when the crowd
attacked the Commissioner's office. They fired ten blank shots with their one
cannon; ironically, this show of force aided the rescuers by adding to the
confusion. Thus about five marshalls faced an armed, determined party of
over two thousand rioters.35
34 Gurney S. Strong, Early Landmarks of Syracuse (Syracuse: Times Publishing Co.,
1894), pp. 280-85; Baker, p. in; May, Emerson, and Mumford, p. 221; Loguen,
p. 411; Syracuse Star, 15 Oct. 1851; Syracuse Standard, 15 Oct. 1851. 35
Syracuse Star, 3, 4, 5, 8 Oct. 1851. The sheriff, according to Jermain Loguen, was
436 Jay me A. So\olow
The enraged mob smashed the remaining windows of the Commissioner's
office and destroyed the outside door with a ten foot wooden battering ram.
As the building was beseiged, one of the marshalls opened the inner door and
fired twice, injuring one man. When the door to Jerry's room was loosened, the gas jets were turned off so that the building was shrouded in darkness.
In terror, Jerry's guards covered themselves with boxes or hid in the closet,
leaving the frightened fugitive shackled and lying on the floor. One guard ordered Jerry to "Go out -
why the devil don't you go?" "How can I go,"
Jerry replied, "Are you so cowardly crazy as not to know you have chained me so I can't go." The hapless marshall quickly opened the door, pushed
Jerry out, and crawled back into the closet. The fugtive, who could not walk
because he had been injured that afternoon, was hoisted out of the jail to the
accompaniment of cheers.36
Instead of taking Jerry outside the city, his rescuers drove him around
town, had his irons removed at a blacksmith's shop, and then hid him at
Caleb Davis's house. This sixty-year-old butcher was a staunch Democrat who had always opposed May. Despite his reputation, Davis deeply resented the intrusion of the slavery controversy into the community and thus gladly agreed to keep Jerry. For four days the authorities searched Syracuse for the
runaway but never considered examining the house of a loyal Democrat. On
Sunday, Davis took his weekly drive into the countryside to collect beef with
Jerry in the bottom of the cart, armed and covered with sacking. A team of fleet horses had been furnished by Jason Woodruff, the former Democratic
mayor of Syracuse. When the police discovered that Jerry had escaped, a
few people in wagons tried to capture Davis. Their attempt was foiled by the
tollkeeper on the Cicero plank road, who delayed pursuit by feigning sleep. Davis prudently had driven over the route two hours earlier and bribed all the tollkeepers to ensure his safe passage.
The next morning Jerry arrived at the farm of a wealthy Democratic farmer who hid and fed him. From there he was taken to Oswego, put aboard a British schooner, and escaped to Kingston, Ontario, where he lived in freedom as a cooper. From Canada he penned a grateful letter of thanks to Syracuse's abolitionists. The Vigilance Committee sent President Fillmore a box containing Jerry's shackles as a momento of the rescue; they did not
quite sympathetic to the rescue. During the afternoon of i 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 y See Loguen, p. 410. 36 Baker, pp. 111-12; Strong, pp. 281-86; May, Emerson, and Mumford, pp. 220-21;
Loguen, pp. 417-18; Samuel Ringgold Ward, Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro:
His Anti-Slavery labours in the United States, Canada, & England (London: J. Snow, 1855), pp. 117-28.
Growth of Northern Antislavery Sentiment during the 1850s 437
want the Whig administration to forget that Webster's promises had not
been kept. In Ontario Jerry died of tuberculosis on 8 October 1853.a7
Although Syracuse mourned the fugitive's untimely death, its citizens joy
fully went on commemorating the Jerry rescue until the Civil War. "No
Robbery of Man's Inalienable Rights can be law" was the slogan of the first
meeting, which attracted 2,500 people including Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Lucretia Mott, and many of Jerry's indicted
rescuers.38 The city's belief in the inviolability of human freedom had led it
to a violent but successful confrontation with the federal government.
IV
Throughout antebellum America, collective violence such as the Jerry rescue
was used to accomplish political goals and express community values. In
Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, for example, there were
thirty-five major riots between 1830 and i860; northern abolitionists re
ported 209 violent disorders in the 1830s and 1840s. Rioting was a frequent and effective means by which groups attempted to control competition
among themselves or respond
to challenges
to their status, power, wealth, or
political influence. From anti-immigrant riots to election-day brawls, group violence was a pervasive part of American life in the decades before the
Civil War.39 No wonder Abraham Lincoln complained that "Accounts of
37 May, Recollections, pp. 378-79; Loguen, pp. 422-24; The Liberator, 24 Oct. 1851;
Frederic^ Douglass' Paper, 8 April 1852, 4 Feb., 4 March 1853. 38
Anti-Slavery Bugle, 25 Sept. 1852; Frederic^ 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 Wendell Phillips Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison:
The Story of His Life Told by his Children, 4 vols. (Boston and New York:
Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1894), 3, 335; 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 Yor\ (Syracuse: Daily Journal Office, 1852). 39 Richard Maxwell Brown, Strain of Violence: Historical Studies of American
Violence and Vigilantism (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1975), pp. 91-143;
43 8 Jay me A. So\olow
outrages committed by mobs form the every-day news of the times. They have pervaded the country, from New England to Louisiana. .. . Whatever,
then, their cause may be, it is common to the whole country."40
The pro-abolitionist violence of the Jerry rescuers differed from the com
mon types of antebellum group violence in two respects. First, most rioting
during this era was either
expressive or
preservationist. Expressive rioting,
which included gang fights, firemen's brawls, election riots, and labor
violence, reinforced the rioters' own sense of solidarity and communicated it
to the outside world. Preservationist groups used collective violence to impose their dominance over alleged outsiders -
Catholics, Mormons, blacks, or
abolitionists.41 The Jerry rescue, by contrast, combined both forms. The
Vigilance Committee and its supporters were trying to cement community
solidarity, express their sense of justice, and apply moral values against a
group which was perceived as consisting of either aliens or intruders. In
Syracuse, they were Commissioner Sabine and the deputy marshalls, who
were local residents, and the two men from Missouri, James Lear and Marion
County sheriff Samuel Smith. The Jerry rescue did not represent an internal
conflict in which abolitionists triumphed over Syracuse pro-slavery advocates
but instead was a community demonstration against a distant enemy and its
local law enforcers.
Second, the collective violence of the Jerry rescue marked the development of a novel type of strife in pre-Civil War America: pro-abolitionist rioting.
As Leonard L. Richards has cogently argued with regard to the 1830s, abolitionists were often the victims of "gentlemen of property and standing"
who saw themselves as guardians of civic order, public morality, and the law.
Antislavery crusaders, they feared, defied the right of local residents to
develop their own patterns of behavior. The abolitionists' evangelical fervor
Michael Feldberg, The Philadelphia Riots of 1844: A Study of Ethnic Conflict (Westport Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1975); Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill,
Carthage Conspiracy : The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith (Urbana, 111.: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1975); Sam Bass Warner Jr, The Private City: Phila
delphia in Three Periods of Its Growth (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1968), pp. 125-57; Paul O. Weinbaum, Mobs and Demogogues: The New
Yor\ Response to Collective Violence in the Early 19th Century (Ann Arbor, Mich. :
UMI Press, 1978); Ray A. Billington, The Protestant Crusade, 1800-1860: A Study of the Origins of American Natavism (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1938);
David Grimsted, "Rioting in Its Jacksonian Setting," American Historical Review,
77 (1972), 361-97; Clement Eaton, "Mob Violence in the Old South," Mississippi
Valley Historical Review, 29 (1942), 351-70. 40
Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Worlds of Abraham Lincoln, 9 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1953-55), I, 109.
41 Michael Feldberg, The Turbulent Era: Riot and Disorder in Jacksonian America
(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1980).
Growth of Northern Antislavery Sentiment during the 1850s 439
and appeals to individual conscience threatened traditional forms of parental,
religious, and community authority. Richards discovered that in cities such as Utica and Cincinnati, lawyers, bankers, financiers, merchants, and sturdy
artisans rioted to expel abolitionists who tried to impose alien standards on
the local citizenry. In New York state, which was second only to Ohio in
anti-abolitionist activity, violence peaked in the mid-i830s. Even in the
burned-over district, rioters attacked antislavery advocates in Genessee,
Oswego, Ostego, Oneida, Allegany, Chautauqua, Erie, Niagara, and
Madison counties.42 Yet by the 1850s these areas had become abolitionist
strongholds which openly rejected the Fugitive Slave Law. Why was
Syracuse, like many northern communities, so hostile toward the rendition of
runaways? By examining the Jerry rescuers, we can understand better the
reasons why the city declared its communal solidarity by violently resisting the federal government.
To compare the Jerry rescuers with the anti-abolitionist mobs in Utica
(1835) and Cincinnati (1836), I have assembled data on the Syracuse rioters
from contemporary newspapers, court proceedings, eyewitness accounts, and
memoirs (see Appendix I). Police records could not be used because all the
police material prior to 1870 has been lost. Unfortunately, this has meant
that almost all of the fifty-two male participants who could be positively identified were active and prominent local abolitionists. Richards was able to
compile much more representative lists because in Utica the abolitionists and
their opponents published the names of nearly all the rioters and in Cincinnati
the records of arrests and reports of judicial proceedings were more complete than in Syracuse.43 Nevertheless, by using the occupational classifications of
Sidnev Aronson,44 we can compare the three different mobs and so uncover
significant differences and similarities in occupation and motivation.
42 Leonard L. Richards, "
Gentlemen of Property and Standing": Anti-Abolition Mobs
in Jacksonian America (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970). For a similar argu ment see Lorman A. Ratner, "Northern Concern for Social Order as Cause of
Rejecting Anti-Slavery, 1831-1840," The Historian, 28 (1965), 1-18; Powder Keg: Northern Opposition to the Anti-Slavery Movement, 1831?1840 (New York: Basic
Books, 1968). 43
Richards, pp. 134-50. I have excluded considering the New York City riot of 1836
because, as Richards admits, it was atvpical of antebellum anti-abolitionist violence. 44
Sidney Aronson, 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). 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.
44? Jay me A. So\olow
Perhaps the most striking difference between the anti-abolitionist and the
abolitionist riots was the active participation of blacks in fugitive slave rescues. Of the fifty-two Syracuse abolitionists involved in the Jerry rescue, seven were blacks: Prince Jackson, Samuel R. Ward, Jermain W. Loguen, Peter Hallenbeck, William Gray, James Baker, and Enoch Reed. Sometimes
led by white abolitionists, but also acting on their own initiative, blacks in
northern communities demonstrated a willingness to prevent the rendition of
fellow blacks. Some of these protesters were themselves in a precarious
position because they too were fugitive slaves. After the indictment of the
Jerry rescuers, two black members of the Vigilance Committee, Ward and
Loguen, avoided prosecution by fleeing to Canada. Throughout the decade, both free and runaway blacks played a prominent role in almost all the
attempted fugitive slave rescues.45
Interestingly, the whites involved in the Jerry rescue came from occupa tions which had also been well represented among the earlier anti-abolitionist
rioters in Cincinnati and Utica. In those two cities, a disproportionate num
ber of commercial and professional men had rioted against the abolitionists.
Richards calculated that about three-fourths of those involved were profes sionals, merchants, bank keepers, shopkeepers, or clerks. Many were descended
from old and distinguished families closely identified with the mercantile
economy of Jeffersonian and early Jacksonian America. The abolitionists in
those cities, by way of contrast, had a lower proportion of commercial and
professional supporters and many were manufacturers or artisans, foreigners, and members of evangelical churches. The differing social composition of the two groups, according to Richards, indicated that men rioted against the
abolitionists because the anti-slavery crusade challenged local patterns of
authority and influence.46
In Syracuse similarly, a disproportionate number of commercial and
professional people participated in the Jerry rescue. S. H. Potter, for example, was a member of the Board of Trustees and the faculty of the Syracuse Medical College. John Wilkinson, a lawyer, served on the Board of Directors of the Syracuse City Waterworks, the New York, Albany and Buffalo
Telegraph Company, the Rochester and Syracuse Railroad, and was president of the Syracuse and Utica Railroad. E. W. Leavenworth also was a director of the same corporation. And Vivus W. Smith edited the Syracuse Daily 45
Ward, pp. 429-34; Loguen, pp. 133-226. 46
Richards, pp. 134-50. Gerald Sorin, in his study of antebellum New York abolition
ists, 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 Yor\ Abolitionists: A Case
Story of Political Radicalism (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1971).
Growth of Northern Antislavery Sentiment during the 1850s 441
Journal. Using as an index those
Jerry rescuers whose occupations
are known,
it would appear that they represented the financial and professional elite of a
prosperous commercial center, twenty-eight of them (68 percent) being
professional and commercial men, viz:
lawyers ?
4, ministers -
6, merchants ?
6, physicians ?
4, teacher ?
1, journalists ?
2, clerks ?
2, newspaper editors
? 3. Of the remaining thirteen (32 percent),
one was a manufacturer, seven
were skilled laborers and tradesmen, and only five were unskilled or semi
skilled.
This occupational breakdown of the known Jerry rescuers is remarkably like the abolitionists' analysis of their adversaries. Throughout the antebellum
era, they believed that their opponents were commercial and professional men who incited mechanics and the lower orders into rioting.47 "Purse
proud aristocrats" provoked "penniless profligates,'' according to abolition
ists such as William Goodell and Lydia Maria Child, because northern elites
were tied to southern economic and political institutions and thus regarded the emancipation struggle
as a threat to their status.48 The Jerry rescue, how
ever, does not fit in with this popular abolitionist belief because the mob
contained so many people traditionally hostile to the antislavery crusade.
Why, then, did so many representatives of the major professional occupations in Syracuse participate in a pro-abolitionist riot ?
Based on Richards' analysis of anti-abolitionist mobs, we might conclude
that the Jerry rescue received widespread support because Syracuse's citizens
regarded the Fugitive Slave Law and its supporters in much the same way as
the anti-abolitionist mobs had previously perceived their opponents - as
dangerous intruders who threatened to weaken cherished values and destroy the power of local elites. Syracuse was a community that took pride in its
amicable race relations and republican institutions. Until the passage of the
Fugitive Slave Law, neither the local nor the federal government seriously threatened community autonomy. But after 1850, Syracuse thwarted any
attempt to reclaim fugitive slaves because local citizens such as Sabine, Allen, his assistants, and the two Missouri residents were seen to be disrupting the
community consensus and imposing unacceptable standards on local citizens.
The Jerry rescuers pictured themselves defending the established order
against the encroachments of both resident law enforcement officers and
meddlesome outsiders. And, as in many of the pro-abolitionist riots, Syracuse's leaders assured the Jerry rescuers that they had done their duty by upholding the sanctity of public opinion. On 14 October a convention met in Syracuse
47 The Anti-Slavery Record, 2 (July 1836), 73-82. 48 American Anti-Slavery Society, Fourth Annual Report (New York: American Anti
Slavery Society, 1837), pp. 57-60.
44 2 Jay me A. So\olow
to "consider the principles of the American government, and the extent to
which they are trampled under foot by the fugitive slave law."49 There May and other local notables reiterated their opposition to slavery and declared
that Syracuse had not violated the law on i October. They had set aside an
"unnatural, cruel edict; they trampled upon tyranny."50 The city had vindi
cated the natural rights of man.
This hostile reaction to people who were perceived as intruders helps
explain why even diehard Democrats such as Caleb Davis and Jason Wood
ruff participated in the rescue. Such conversions occurred throughout the
country. John Parker Hale vehemently opposed local abolitionist lecturers in
1835, but in 1847 he became the Liberty Party's Presidential candidate and
in 1852 he headed the Free Soil ticket.51 Orsamus B. Matteson, who was
involved in the 1835 Utica riot, became a Radical Republican and a close
associate of Hale and Thaddeus Stevens.52 Apparently the antislavery crusade
was successful in convincing many northerners that the slave power was a
greater threat to their status and authority than organized abolitionism.53
The rejection of agitators who threatened local elites and community
autonomy, however, could in turn be used to attack abolitionists or deny blacks equal rights. When abolitionists argued that slavery was a menace to
the Union and a great evil, Syracuse citizens showed hostility toward the
South and slavery but nevertheless retained a belief in black inferiority. And
abolitionists could still be the objects of mob violence if local communities
were again persuaded that the antislavery crusade was threatening and dis
ruptive. During the secession crisis abolitionists were attacked and silenced
throughout upstate New York. In Buffalo, former Governor Horatio
Seymour led a mob that routed an antislavery gathering and passed reso
lutions supporting the Crittenden Compromise. Abolitionist speakers were
shouted down in Utica, Rochester, Rome, and Auburn. And in Syracuse, which had been a haven for runaway slaves and opponents of the Fugitive
49 Samuel Joseph May, Speech of the Rev. Samuel J. May, to the Convention of Citizens
of Onondaga County (Syracuse: Agan & Summers, Printers, 1851), p. 2. 5?
Ibid., p. 18. 51 Richard H. Sewell, John P. Hale and the Politics of Abolition (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard Univ. Press, 1965). 52
Henry J. Cookingham, History of Oneida County, New Yor\, from iyoo to the
Present Time, 2 vols. (Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1912), 1, 252?54. 53 For excellent analyses of the slave power conspiracy concept, see R?ssel B. Nye,
Fettered Freedom (Urbana, 111.: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1972), pp. 282-315; David
Brion Davis, The Slave Power Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style (Baton Rouge, La. :
Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1969); The Fear of Conspiracy : Images of Un-American
Subversion from the Revolution to the Present (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1971),
pp. 102-48.
Growth of Northern Antislavery Sentiment during the 1850s 443
Slave Law, abolitionists were attacked by mobs wielding pistols and knives
and throwing rotten eggs. Effigies of Susan B. Anthony and Samuel Joseph
May were dragged through the streets and burned in the city square.54 When
abolitionists seemed to promote disunion by their militant ideology and
opposition to compromise, "gentlemen of property and standing" turned
against them again. Thus, even in Syracuse, abolitionists occupied a pre carious position. Their rallies and presence during the secession winter
inaugurated a season of mob violence unparalleled since the early years of the
antislavery movement.
We need more studies of pro-abolitionist mobs in northern cities in
order better to understand the growth of antislavery sentiment in the decade
before the Civil War. It is possible that Syracuse was an untypical northern
community because of its relatively homogeneous population and receptivity to reform causes. Nevertheless, the rhetoric, behavior, and
occupational
backgrounds of the Jerry rescuers and their supporters demonstrates that the
citizens of Syracuse supported the antislavery crusade for many of the same
reasons that mobs attacked abolitionists. Opposition to the slave power pro
moted community solidarity and reinforced widely accepted beliefs in oppo sition to those who seemed to threaten local elites and traditional authority
-
the South and its northern allies.
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. 182-88; May, Recollections, pp. 389-95.
444 Jay me A. So\olow
Appendix I : Known Participants in the Jerry McHenry Rescue*
Occupation
Place of Residence Person Race
Samuel J. May white Syracuse Sereno F. King white Syracuse Prince Jackson black Syracuse Charles Merrick white Syracuse
Jason S. Hoyt white Syracuse Gerrit Smith white Petersboro
James Fuller white Syracuse R. William Pease white Syracuse Charles Wheaton white Syracuse Samuel R. Ward black Syracuse
Vivus W. Smith white Syracuse Charles B. Sedgwick white Syracuse Hiram Putnam white Syracuse E. W. Leavenworth white Syracuse
George Barnes white Syracuse Patrick H. Agan white Syracuse
John Wilkinson white Syracuse
John Thomas white Syracuse William C. Crandell white Syracuse Thomas G. White white unknown
George Carter white unknown
L. D. Mansfield white unknown
Joseph R. Johnson white Syracuse
S. H. Potter white Syracuse William L. Salmon white Granby
Jermain W. Loguen black Syracuse R. R. Raymond white Syracuse
Montgomery Merrick white Syracuse Abner Bates white Syracuse
James Bates white Syracuse
J. W. Clapp white Syracuse
James Baker black Syracuse Edward Hunt white Syracuse
George Carter white Syracuse Caleb Davis white Syracuse Peter Hallenbeck black Syracuse
James Parsons white Syracuse Lemuel Field white Syracuse
William Gray black Syracuse Samuel Thomas white Cazenovia
C. P. Noble white Fayetteville Ira H. Cobb white Syracuse
Washington Stikney white Canastota
Origen Vandeburgh white Syracuse Moses Sumner white Syracuse
Unitarian minister
teamster
barber and dyer brick layer
carriage manufacturer
landowner, businessman
druggist, physician
physician hardware store owner
Congregational minister
newspaper editor
lawyer clerk
lawyer
bookkeeper
newspaper editor
lawyer
newspaper editor
journalist unknown
unknown
minister (denomination
unknown) minister (denomination
unknown)
physician unknown
A. M. E. minister
minister (denomination
unknown) mason
tanner
food vendor
furnaceman
whitewasher
mason
unknown
butcher
unknown
blacksmith
unknown
laborer
unknown
unknown
hardware and mason
unknown
lawyer
journalist
Growth of Northern Antislavery Sentiment during the 1850s 445
Person Race
Enoch Reed black
John Hornbeck white
J. B. Brigham white
Lyman Clary white
Charles F. Williston white
Jason Woodruff white
D. O. Salmon white
Place of Residence Occupation
Syracuse unknown
Syracuse unknown
Syracuse schoolteacher
Syracuse physician
Syracuse cabinet shopowner
Syracuse livery
Syracuse tobacconist
* All occupations derived from the Daily Journal City Register and Directory, i8ji
i8j2 (Syracuse: Daily Journal Office, 1852).