 On October 1st, 1851, federal marshals from the surrounding area of Syracuse, New York arrested William McHenry, a slave who is known by the name Jerry after escaping to freedom. Just like the marshals I talked about in the previous episode, these officials were operating under the new fugitive slave law. But where they arrested Jerry, local abolitionists had already been organizing to establish a defense from the law in New York. It just so happened that at the time of the arrest, the abolitionists were holding a convention at a nearby church, and word quickly made it to them of Jerry's arrest, possibly due to the leaking of information before their arrest took place by the wife of the commissioner who was supposed to hear the case. The abolitionists already had plans in place as to how to signal to each other in the event of a fugitive slave arrest in the area. They started ringing church bells, alerting others to convene at the commissioner's office. A crowd of resistors gathered at the office of Commissioner Sabine, where Jerry was awaiting his arraignment. The crowd attempted to free him, but he only got as far as making it out of the street. He was still constrained by his iron shackles at the time. But because of the attempt, the arraignment was postponed and Jerry was moved to a larger room. So with more time and even larger group of resistors assembled, surrounding the building where Jerry was being held prisoner, the resistors broke down the door with a battering ram. The marshals fired their pistols out of a window, but the crowd was far too large for them to stop. One of the marshals even lucked out of the window to escape, breaking his arm. Jerry was surrendered to the rescuers, and for several days he was hidden in the home of a local butcher who would be an unlikely place to look for a fugitive since the butcher was known to be a vocal opponent of the abolitionists. Finally, Jerry was taken to Canada, where the fugitive slave law had no legal jurisdiction. After Jerry's rescue, 12 local blacks and 12 local whites were tried, not for treason, as in the case of Christiana, but for riot. Only one of the black men was convicted, but he died shortly after, so he was never able to appeal to verdict. Among the abolitionists who helped with the Jerry rescue was Garrett Smith, who would later become, by the way, one of the Secret Six, who helped to fund John Brown. And after Jerry's escape, Smith offered a resolution for the convention for the New Liberty Party. In his speech, he called out Daniel Webster for supporting the fugitive slave law as part of the 1850 compromise. Remember that Webster in the 1830s was the vocal opponent of secession and nullification because of the importance of unionism. As part of Smith's resolution, Smith wrote, quote, we rejoice that the city of Syracuse, the anti-slavery city of Syracuse, the city of anti-slavery conventions, our beloved and glorious city of Syracuse, still remains undiscraced by the fulfillment of the Satanic prediction of the Satanic Daniel Webster, end quote. I'm Chris Coutten. This is the Mises Institute podcast, Historical Controversy. We spent the last two episodes talking about the fugitive slave law, and this episode is going to finish this up by talking about some of the other significant episodes that came out of this controversy and take us into Bleeding Kansas, which will be the topic of the next few episodes. The significance of the fugitive slave law cannot be understated, as it helped fuel the fires in the sectional controversy. And it drove many Northerners who had long been somewhat apathetic to slavery into moving toward the abolitionists, even if it was only for political reasons. After 1851, the enforcement of the fugitive slave law died down a bit. While northern fugitives were still being returned to the south in accordance with the law, the 1852 fugitive slave claims only amounted to a third of the total in 1851. Although I haven't found anything trying to offer any detailed explanation of this, it does make me wonder how much of the change in northern sentiments and the resistance groups might have affected southern attempts to reclaim fugitive slaves. From an economic point of view, if I can offer a small digression here, this is interesting, because there's an ongoing debate about whether or not slavery was profitable. And historians in the past few decades have pretty much conceded that it was profitable, which I don't disagree with. But I think the questions are open-ended, with historians avoiding some of the constraining questions that could impact the analysis. These would be counterfactuals, which are dangerous in history, so I'm not really criticizing historians for avoiding them. But it's important to consider how the fugitive slave law artificially lowered the cost of owning slaves by essentially socializing the risk component of slave ownership to the non-slave owning north. The resistance groups, economically, offset some of these cost reductions by organizing to resist the new law. So it's possible that the reduction in claims was due, at least in part, to the economic considerations of slave owners willing to consider the cost of reclaiming fugitive slaves, especially after the slave owner I mentioned in the last episode, Ed Gorsuch, paid with his life for a failed attempt at reclaiming slaves. To my knowledge, there's no study that actually makes this argument, but there have been studies comparing the costs of slaves in different states. And slaves in border states did trade at roughly a 10% discount, which has been attributed to the greater risk of runaways in those states. So while we may concede that slavery was profitable as an institution in the antebellum United States, it is worth questioning how profitable it would have been in the absence of laws like the Fugitive Slave Act that helped to socialize the cost of slave ownership. But in any case, fugitive slave claims decreased substantially after 1851, but there were still claims being made even into the war years. So the outrage by many Northerners against this law continued to grow, and anti-slavery sentiments among the North continued to expand as a corollary of this. The Fugitive Slave Law wasn't the only thing driving the growth of anti-slavery sentiment among Northerners. Earlier in the 19th century, there was a wave of Protestant revivals known as the Second Great Awakening. Abolitionism was a particularly controversial aspect of this new wave of Christian activity. The Second Great Awakening descended from the Puritans, and they rejected the notion of Calvinist predestination, and they adopted the idea of collective responsibility. Thus, according to this new movement, redemption could be freely chosen, but the elimination of sin was a collective responsibility. So if slavery was a sin, as many New Englanders accepted during this movement, then they were responsible for helping their brothers and sisters in the South for stamping it out. By then, to bell and period, this all became politicized, and as a result, there were splits in the Northern and Southern Protestant denominations. Baptists are a good example, as the distinction of Southern Baptists grew out of this. And just to make it clear that I'm not implying that modern Southern Baptists are any kind of pro-slavery, neo-Confederate or any of those common epithets we might hear being slung around, I myself grew up in a Southern Baptist church, so don't take this as any kind of attack on Southern Baptists beliefs today, but the distinction of Southern Baptist denomination was born out of this antebellum division where the Northern Baptists increasingly accepted that slavery was a social sin, and Southern Baptists believed that slavery was given sanction in the Bible, which was a common religious argument by pro-slavery Southerners in the first half of the 19th century. By the 1830s, many abolitionists emerged out of this movement, and a large portion of them were part of this quasi-anarchistic ideology of non-resistance, which Leo Tolstoy is famous for in the histories of anarchist thought. I say quasi-anarchistic, the many historians explicitly call this anarchism outright, and not without good reason, but I call it quasi-anarchistic because most of these people, including William Lloyd Garrison, offered a very anarchistic critique of the government, namely that everything the government does requires force and violence, and this is, per se, immoral. But rather than advocating no government, most of these religious non-resistors believed they were supporting the government of God, which would only be achieved by pursuing moral perfection by humans. This was Garrison's position, and to the subscribers of these ideas, the greatest of humanity's many sins was slavery. For the record, I don't really consider Garrison to be part of the anarchist history, although I do recognize that there is significant overlap of ideas between the moral abolitionists, who usually adhered to a higher law doctrine over man-made laws, which is effectively the natural law position, but Garrison did believe that while a man-made government was inherently immoral, it could be used to eliminate greater immoralities. This is why Garrison initially opposed the war, and even since 1842, he openly advocated disunion with his rallying cry of no union with slaveholders. He did eventually switch to a support of the war. When the war started, he was advocating that it be made a war over slavery, even though Lincoln was claiming that it wasn't, and he supported it more vigorously after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. The war was a sin in Garrison's views, but it was a lesser sin than slavery, so as long as the war was being waged to end slavery, he believed it was justified. People who I do consider as part of the anarchist history, such as Losander Spooner and Ezra Haywood, stuck to their guns on the war issues. Spooner and Haywood continued to oppose the war on moral grounds throughout the war, and even after the 13th Amendment was passed. Their beliefs weren't radically different from the Garrisonians fundamentally, but they refused to acknowledge the lesser evil argument as valid, and none of this is to criticize Garrison, who I actually really like for his moral consistency on issues, both regarding and outside the question of slavery. I just wanted to point out the distinction and thought between the religious abolitionists who believed in a government of God, who are often understandably referred to as anarchists because of their critiques of government, and the more dogmatic abolitionists like Losander Spooner. Spooner incidentally did not subscribe to the theory of non-resistance that many Christian anarchists and abolitionists adhered to, but I'm going to talk more about that when I discuss John Brown, who Spooner greatly admired and supported, and all of Brown's fascinating and controversial history that'll come in later episodes. I'm not going to talk much about the history of the abolitionist movement here, though I expect I will be talking about it more in a later episode on the election of 1856, because the abolitionist movement played an important role in the new parties that led to the emergence of the Republican Party in the new party system. So we'll save that until then. For now, it's just worth establishing the importance of this new religious movement in growing the moral outrage against slavery in the North and why, due to the doctrine of collective responsibility, more Northerners were willing to take action against slavery by aiding fugitives in the underground railroad and form vigilance committees to defend fugitives from arrest, among other things. But through the 1830s and 1840s, abolitionists were still a minority, even if they were a growing minority. Most Northerners looked at the abolitionists as a nuisance that made them look bad. Racism was hardly less rampant in the North than it was in the South and most anti-slavery Northerners, like David Wilmont, were really just interested in the interests of free white labor in competition with black labor, slave or free. This racially motivated concern for white labor would persist for the next century after emancipation, of course. But in the antebellum years, this was the least controversial anti-slavery position a person could hold. By the 1850s, with the fugitive slave law placing new burdens on Northerners, many new Englanders started viewing the abolitionists with more sympathy. And the many violent clashes between the pro-slavery Southern activists and the anti-slavery Northern activists would only fuel the anti-slavery fire that was spreading in the North. So this anti-slavery movement really started to take off in the 1830s with the Second Great Awakening, establishing a firmly moral and religious argument against slavery. And this moral opposition started to become normalized rather than being part of some isolated, radical fringe group after the fugitive slave law of 1850. We might say that the Great Awakening was the kindling and the fugitive slave law was the gasoline. This brings us back to 1852. One of the abolitionists that emerged out of the Second Great Awakening was Henry Ward Beecher, who, among other activities, helped finance the anti-slavery factions in Kansas that we will start talking about in the next episode, but his sister is more famous. She was Harriet Beecher Stowe, and in 1852 she published Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was a runaway success. Stowe's story was originally published in a serialized version in an anti-slavery newspaper, and this ran for nine months before the first printing in book form, which was only for 5,000 copies, but these were gone in a matter of days. Within the year, the book had sold 300,000 copies in the United States and a million copies in Britain. If we adjust for population, Uncle Tom's Cabin is the best-selling novel of all time, and it was translated into several foreign languages very quickly after publication, so it enjoyed global success and made Harriet Beecher Stowe a very wealthy and famous woman. Even this still likely understates the enormous presence of this book, because this was a time when it was very common for books to be read aloud to groups of people, so some historians have estimated that the sales numbers may reflect as little as 10% of the total people who were exposed to the story. I actually suspect that this is an exaggerated estimate, but regardless, it is undeniably true that this is far and away the most widely read novel of the 19th century. Stowe claimed that her book was inspired by God, but God was using the fugitive slave law as the instrument for his inspiration. Stowe was clearly illustrating the ideas of the second Great Awakening and his collective responsibility in her story. Many of the more despicable characters were Northerners and she also had several Southern characters who were presented rather sympathetically. When writing the story, Stowe was certainly pulling from real experiences, some her own and some from the testimonies of others. She witnessed slavery in Kentucky and interacted with fugitive slaves in Ohio for many years before she wrote the book, and all of this, of course, influenced her work, but she also based her novel on a great deal of documentation that she published the year after the novel was released in a work called Akita Uncle Tom's Cabin. The subtitle of Akita Uncle Tom's Cabin was presenting the original facts and documents upon which the story is founded together with corroborative statements verifying the truth of the work. I'd like to read the second paragraph of the preface to this book. Quote, in fictitious writing, it is possible to find refuge from the hard and to the terrible by inventing scenes and characters of a more pleasing nature. No such resources open in a work of fact and the subject of this work is one on which the truth, if told at all, must needs be very dreadful. This is no bright side to slavery as such. Those scenes which are made bright by the generosity and kindness of masters and mistresses would be brighter still if the element of slavery were withdrawn. There is nothing picturesque or beautiful in the family attachment of old servants, which is not to be found in countries where these servants are legally free. The tenants on an English estate are often more fond and faithful than if they were slaves. Slavery, therefore, is not the element which forms the picturesque and beautiful of Southern life. What is peculiar to slavery and distinguishes it from free servitude is evil and only evil and that continually. This paragraph is indicative of the response she received from Southerners to her book. She was clearly aiming the book at Northerners and in that regard she definitely had her mark, but Southerners quickly jumped on the book and accused her of quote unquote falsehoods and distortions in the depiction of slavery. One Southern literary review said quote, I would have the review as hot as hellfire, blasting and searing the reputation of the vile wretch in petticoats who would write such a volume, end quote. In fact, many Southern cities like Charleston, South Carolina tried to have the book banned, but demand for the book was remarkably high even in the South and booksellers continually sold out their copies. But in a key to Uncle Tom's cabin, Stowe gives a pretty meticulous documentation of her source material. She organized the book in chapters dedicated to different topics and questions of the debate. So for instance, the second chapter of a key to Uncle Tom's cabin is about the character Mr. Haley. The third chapter describes the source material for the Shelby's and so on with part one of the book devoting chapters to different characters and character groups. Chapter 13, for instance, is devoted to the Quakers and the source for her description of this group. In subsequent parts of the book, she tackles the documentary sources from other topics such as her description of the law and the institution of slavery itself in American society. Chapter 14 of part two is interesting as an example because it talks about Hebrew slave laws versus American slave laws which was particularly relevant as both the pro and anti-slavery factions of the United States invoked a biblical defense of their position. In many cases, Stowe simply explained her own experience in the style of a memoir. In other places, she cites documented sources such as the written records of testimonies given at trials for fugitive slaves and newspaper advertisements for runaways. And one of the more interesting chapters devoted to her description of the separation of slave families, Stowe responds directly to the letter written by a South Carolinian who accused her of fabricating her description of slave children being sold away from their mothers. Quoting from the letter, the anonymous author writes, we are told of infants of 10 months old being sold from the arms of their mothers and of men whose habit it is to raise children to sell away from their mother as soon as they are old enough to be separated." End quote. And Stowe responded by reprinting three pages worth of South Carolina newspaper advertisements for slaves that were up for sale. Many of the advertisements using descriptions like young and desirable to describe the slaves available for purchase. She also reprinted newspaper advertisements for people looking to purchase slaves as advertising their search for quote, a few likely young Negroes. Perhaps the most interesting vindication of Stowe's description of the separation of families came not from Akita Uncle's Tom's Cabin but in the memoirs of Solomon Northup who I mentioned a couple of episodes ago. He was kidnapped prior to the compromise of 1850 but it took 12 years before he was freed from the plantation where he was purchased under the name of a fugitive slave who was legally unaccounted for. These memories are obviously not fiction and not only does Northup describe the separation of children from their mother at a slave auction and possibly the most heart-riching scene in the book is when he describes his interaction with her later when she appears to be severely psychologically damaged from having had her children sold away from her. But the name of the slave in Northup's memoir is the same as the name of the character from Uncle Tom's Cabin whose child is being negotiated for sale at the beginning of the book. Both slaves are named Eliza. This is apparently pure coincidence. The Eliza that Solomon Northup was writing about was named Eliza Barry and as far as I can tell he did not change any names of the real characters. Although the slave catchers gave Northup fake names so their names in the book are the ones given to Northup rather than their real names. The Eliza in Uncle Tom's Cabin, Eliza Harris was probably named after the real life cook employed by Harriet Beecher Stowe and her husband when they were living in Cincinnati. Her name was Eliza Buck and she was a former slave who told Stowe about the helplessness of female slaves against the sexual advances of their slave owners. Eliza was a very common name back then. You read a lot of histories of this and the name Eliza's all over the place. So it's not like a major coincidence but I still think it's an interesting coincidence enough to mention anyway. But when Northup published his memoirs in 1853 his description of Eliza Barry certainly helped to indicate Stowe's description of the fictional Eliza Harris with coincidental parallels. When Stowe published a key to Uncle Tom's Cabin in the same year, she mentioned Northup. In her chapter on slave kidnapping she cited a New York Times article about him and summarized his story as corroboration for some of her descriptions. In the second edition of 12 Years of Slave Northup offered this dedication. Quote, to Harriet Beecher Stowe whose name throughout the world is identified with the great reform, this narrative affording another key to Uncle Tom's Cabin is respectfully dedicated. But the influence of Uncle Tom's Cabin was met by attempted Southern responses in the form of at least 15 novels attempting to demonstrate that slaves were better off under slavery than freedom. One of these novels had a telling title. Uncle Robin and his cabin in Virginia and Tom without one in Boston. With a remarkable lack of subtlety this book was obviously trying to make the common Southern argument that were it not for slavery the poor inferior black race would never be able to provide for themselves so slavery should be seen as a positive moral good. But of course all of these Southern responses combined failed to even come close to the success of Uncle Tom's Cabin. It's also worth noting the origins of the pejorative Uncle Tom which is used to insult black people who supposedly appeal to oppressive whites. But this insult was born out of the so-called Tom shows that were adapted as stage performances that traveled around the country for many years even after the Civil War and they distorted Stowe's novel. Stowe herself never sanctioned any of these Tom shows though she did see one of them the one produced by George Akin and she seems to have approved of that adaptation but many of these Tom shows took liberties that she almost certainly would have disapproved of. One of the more famous Tom shows produced by H.J. Conway presented a more moderate message about slavery than that depicted in Stowe's novel. The less accurate adaptations made the cruel representation of slavery seem like an exception rather than the rule of how slavery was practiced in the South and the ending was altered to grant Tom his freedom so that the audience could enjoy a happy ending unlike the one that the book provided in which he was killed. Other shows even tried to insert new characters to provide comic relief so these shows continued to run all the way into the early 20th century. The final significant episode I wanna talk about is probably the most famous and that's the story of Anthony Burns. Burns was an escaped slave from Virginia who made his way to Boston as a Stowe way on a ship. In Boston Burns found work in a clothing store but Burns was literate and he decided to write a letter to his brother who was still enslaved in Virginia. The letter was intercepted and it gave the information as to Burns's whereabouts so his former owner filed a claim under the Fugitive Slave Act to have him returned. Burns was arrested in Boston in May of 1854 but Boston was one of the most anti-slavery cities in the country if not the most anti-slavery. So like Jerry the Fugitive Slave and the introductory anecdote a vigilance committee of abolitionists got together and resolved to help Burns. Knowing to expect trouble from the Bostonians Boston City Marshal deputized a ton of people to help beef up the city defense. One third of those deputized in fact had criminal records. The vigilance group was led by a Unitarian minister who also became one of John Brown's secret six a few years later. His name was Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Garrett Smith from the Jerry Rescue at the beginning of the episode was the only member of the secret six not from Boston so the other members of the secret six took part in the Burns affair led by Higginson as well. Higginson led the group which consisted of both blacks and whites to the courthouse where Burns was being held. Armed with axes and firearms they seized a banister from a nearby museum to use as a battering ram and they attacked the courthouse in an attempt to rescue Burns. Then a shot rang out which sent many anti-slave rioters running and Higginson yelled out after them you cowards you will desert us now. The first person through the door was a black man in the group and Higginson followed second and his friend Martin Stowell was third. Inside the room the light was poor and gunfire was exchanged leaving one of the new deputies dead. Higginson and the other two men were beaten with clubs. When writing about it later Higginson would wonder why his beatings didn't hurt obviously because of the adrenaline it must have been flowing while all this chaos was taking place. During the fighting one of the deputies would gash open Higginson's face with his saber but he and the rest of his party were able to retreat down the courthouse steps with allies opening fire on the police to cover their retreat. Just like the events at Christiana from several years before this was enough for President Franklin Pierce to send troops to help enforce the law. He sent companies of Marines, Cavalry and Artillery to Boston and they were joined by Massachusetts militiamen and the state police to try to subdue the resistors. President Pierce gave his full support to the officials in Boston in a letter he wrote to the district attorney of the city said, quote, in cure any expense to ensure the execution of the law. He also sent a cutter for the purpose of returning Burns to Virginia. So think about what all this meant. The federal government was openly declaring and demonstrating its willingness to spend any amount of taxpayer dollars for the purpose of returning a single slave to his owner. To the vigilance committee, who prior to attempting to rescue Burns had resolved that resistance to tyrants is obedience to God. All of this demonstrated the depth of the tyranny they were resisting. Hardly a strategy for quelling the resistance. As if designed to deliberately agitate the Northern anti-slavery groups, the U.S. attorney refused even to let the resistors purchase Burns's freedom even though they raised the money to do so and his owner seemed willing to agree to this solution. So at this point, the government's action can only be interpreted as a show of force. They aren't even letting the slave owner agree to sell Burns's freedom. So by this point, the national government is taking such a hard stance in protection of slavery that it was violating not only the natural rights of slaves and anti-slavery activists, but it was even impeding the supposed legal rights of slave owners to sell their slaves. It's really difficult to look at the Anthony Burns episode and not conclude that the interests of the government were only to retain its own authority over the people as a priority that ranked above any political group on either side of the sectional divide. I think when we are talking about the Civil War itself, this kind of behavior is worth remembering. So against the wishes of every party to the dispute, with complete disregard to peaceful resolution, the U.S. attorney pushed the Burns case forward. The attorney won the case in favor of the slave owners we would expect and Burns was escorted through the streets of Boston to board the cutter provided by the U.S. government at taxpayer expense. The people of Boston were livid and with a good reason. So while Burns was being marched through the streets, Bostonians crowded onto the streets. Buildings displayed the American flag hung upside down in a show of obvious disapproval and church bells played tunes of the American Revolution. The buildings along the street in addition to the upside down flags were draped in black. On State Street protestors hung a coffin overhead that Burns and his escorts had to pass under. The coffin was labeled Liberty. The entire affair cost about $100,000 in taxpayer money all to return one slave to an owner who was willing to sell him to people who raised the money to purchase his freedom. $100,000 in 1854 would be the equivalent to more than $4 million today just to put into perspective the degree to which the national government was socializing the cost of owning slaves. After the affair, Higginson gave a sermon saying, quote, 30 years ago it cost only $25 to restore a fugitive slave from Boston and now it costs $100,000. But still the slave is restored, end quote. Another member of the secret six who took part in the Burns affair, Theodore Parker, gave his own sermon in front of a crowd who brought him in to speak. In his sermon, he charged the probate judge from Massachusetts, Edward Greeley, Loring, with the murder of the deputy who was killed in the fight against the anti-slavery crowd. He was your fellow servant in kidnapping, Parker thundered in front of the Boston crowd. He dies at your hand. You fired the shot which makes his wife a widow, his child an orphan. I charge you with filling the courthouse with 184 hired ruffians of the United States and alarming not only this city for her liberties that are in peril, but stirring up the whole Commonwealth of Massachusetts with indignation which no man knows how to stop, which no man can stop. You have done it all, end quote. After the sermon, some of the women who heard him speak sent Loring 30 pieces of silver, which although I get the imagery, seems like an odd way to punish somebody considering the actual value of 30 pieces of silver. But the imagery was powerful, I'm sure. It is worth mentioning that although Burns' owner did seem willing to sell Burns to the group who raised money to purchase his freedom, this was likely due primarily to the uncertainty of whether he was going to get Burns back. Once Burns was returned to him, he was also willing to sell Burns, but he took a stance against selling Burns to anybody who was anti-slavery. So as a matter of principle, as twisted as pro-slavery principles must have been, Burns' owner was willing to sell Burns so long as he wasn't selling him into freedom. Fortunately for Anthony Burns, anti-slavery activists were able to purchase his freedom anyway by raising the money and purchasing him through intermediaries. So Burns eventually did enjoy the rest of his life as a free man. He died in 1862, so he never did see emancipation, but he attended Oberlin College and eventually moved to Canada where he lived until his death. But like the resistance at Christiana, the Burns affair swept the nation and further incensed Northerners to move toward anti-slavery positions. Members of the Vengellance Committee in Boston, including Higginson and Wendell Phillips, among others, were indicted by a grand jury for inciting riot. Two days after Burns' return to Virginia on the 4th of July, William Lloyd Garrison spoke to a crowd of people where he held up a copy of the U.S. Constitution and declared, "'People tell me that this document protects slavery, and do you know what I say to them?' I agree." And then he burned the copy of the Constitution, which he referred to as a covenant with death in front of the crowd. The Burns affair also led to a new wave of personal liberty laws by New England states demonstrating their willingness to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. This episode also leads well under the topic of our next episodes. One of the people who was converted to abolitionist sympathies following the trial of Anthony Burns was a man named Amos A. Lawrence, who said of the affair in a private letter, quote, we went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, compromise union wigs and waked up stark mad abolitionists, end quote. Amos Lawrence, a wealthy textile magnate, would take his newfound fury and channel it into Kansas where the sectional crisis would reach new heights as we will see in the next episode. For more content like this, visit mesis.org.