was to be led to the vessel. The windows were filled with people, the
houses hung in black, the United States flags were draped in mourning.
From a window near the court-house hung a coffin, with the legend: "The
funeral of liberty." The procession itself was composed of a battalion
of United States artillery, one of United States marines, the
marshall's posse of 125 men guarding the fugitive, and a small cannon,
with two more platoons of marines to guard it. To such a pass had come
Boston, with its respect for law, and its reputation for obedience to
those clothed in authority. A Charleston paper spoke of the return of
Burns as a Southern victory, but added that two or three such victories
would ruin the cause. For the movement against slavery was now rising,
with all the advance of a tidal wave and a mighty storm.

The public excitement was greatly increased by the Fugitive Slave
legislation of 1850 and 1854. Many Northern men who were opposed to
slavery in the North condoned slavery in the South. Just as Demetrius
urged that by the making of images of Diana "we have our gain," so timid
capital in the North bowed like a suitor at the feet of the imperial
South, and advised silence, remembering that through the money of
Southern planters it had its livelihood. Wendell Phillips went up and
down the land stirring up opinion against the law. He spoke three
hundred times in one year and two hundred and seventy-five times in
another year. Phillips rose upon the opposition like a war eagle
against an advancing storm. Brave men defied the law, organized the
Underground Railroad, and in every way possible defeated the purpose of
the Fugitive Slave Law. So in 1854 when Senator Douglas engineered
through Congress the famous Kansas-Nebraska Bill, repealing the Missouri
Compromise, the North refused to accept what was so palpably pro-slavery
legislation. This was revolutionary. Instantly the North divided into
two camps. The one question of the hour was "Shall a fugitive slave be