Declaration of sentiments of the coloured citizens of Boston, on the fugitive slave bill!!!, c.5...

African American citizens of Boston respond to the Fugitive Slave Law. Published by the "Friends of Freedom." Signed in print by Lewis Hayden as President of the Friends of Freedom and William C. Nell as Secretary. Also includes another text block at the bottom titled "Address to the Clergy of Massachusetts." The Fugitive Slave Law kindled widespread outrage in the North and converted thousands of Northerners to the free soil doctrine that slavery should be barred from the western territories. "We went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, compromise, Union Whigs," wrote a Massachusetts factory owner, "and waked up stark mad Abolitionists." Eight northern states attempted to invalidate the law by enacting "personal liberty" laws that forbade state officials from assisting in the return of runaways and extending the right of a jury trial to fugitives. Across the North during the 1850s, free blacks staged protests against segregated churches, schools, and public transportation. In New York and Pennsylvania, free blacks launched petition drives for equal voting rights. African churches offered sanctuary to runaways, and black "vigilance" groups in cities like New York and Detroit battled slave catchers who sought to recapture fugitive slaves. Some 15,000 free blacks, convinced that they could never achieve equality in the United States, emigrated to Canada, the Caribbean, and Africa after the adoption of the Fugitive Slave Law. In the following selection, Robert C. Nell, a free man of colour in Boston, denounces the Fugitive Slave Law. Friends of Freedom (1850)