off to the South and sold into slavery. At various places along
the border there were those who made it their duty to guard the
rights of negroes and to prevent kidnapping. These guardians of
the border furnished a nucleus for the development of what was
later known as the Underground Railroad.

In 1796 President Washington wrote a letter to a friend in New
Hampshire with reference to obtaining the return of a negro
servant. He was careful to state that the servant should remain
unmolested rather than "excite a mob or riot or even uneasy
sensations in the minds of well disposed citizens." The result
was that the servant remained free. President Washington here
assumed that "well disposed citizens" would oppose her return to
slavery. Three years earlier the President had himself signed a
bill to facilitate by legal process the return of fugitives
escaping into other States. He was certainly aware that such an
act was on the statute books when he wrote his request to his
friend in New Hampshire, yet he expected that, if an attempt were
made to remove the refugee by force, riot and resistance by a mob
would be the result.

Not until after the foreign slave-trade had been prohibited and
the domestic trade had been developed, and not until there was a
pro-slavery reaction in the South which banished from the slave
States all anti-slavery propaganda, did the systematic assistance
rendered to fugitive slaves assume any large proportions or
arouse bitter resentment. It began in the late twenties and early
thirties of the nineteenth century, extended with the spread of
anti-slavery organization, and was greatly encouraged and
stimulated by the enactment of the law of 1850.