meetinghouses for anti-slavery lectures. The formation of the
Liberty party served to accentuate the division. The great body
of the Friends were anti-slavery Whigs.

A crisis in the affairs of the Society of Friends in the State of
Indiana was reached in 1843 when the radicals seceded and
organized an independent "Anti-Slavery Friends Society."
Immediately there appeared in numerous localities duplicate
Friends' meeting-houses. In and around one of these,
distinguished as "Liberty Hall," were gathered those whose
supreme religious interest was directed against the sin of
slavery. Never was there a church division which involved less
bad blood or sense of injury or injustice. Members of the same
family attended separate churches without the least difference in
their cordial relations. No important principle was involved;
there were apparently good reasons for both lines of policy, and
each party understood and respected the other's position. After
the adoption of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and the passing of
the Whig party, these differences disappeared, the separate
organization was disbanded, and all Friends' meetinghouses became
"liberty halls."

The disposition to aid the fugitive was by no means confined to
the North nor to Quakers in the South. Richard Dillingham, a
young Quaker who had yielded to the solicitations of escaped
fugitives in Cincinnati and had undertaken a mission to
Nashville, Tennessee, to rescue their relatives from a "hard
master," was arrested with three stolen slaves on his hands. He
made confession in open court and frankly explained his motives.
The Nashville Daily Gazette of April 13, 1849, has words of