general plan for emancipation, even in the minds of the
directors. It was a lesser task preparatory to the great work. As
to the numbers of slaves who gained their freedom by means of it,
there is a wide range of opinion. Statements in Congress by
Southern members that a hundred thousand had escaped must be
regarded as gross exaggerations. In any event the loss was
confined chiefly to the border States. Besides, it has been
stated with some show of reason that the danger of servile
insurrection was diminished by the escape of potential leaders.

>From the standpoint of the great body of anti-slavery men who
expected to settle the slavery question by peaceable means, it
was a calamity of the first magnitude that, just at the time when
conditions were most favorable for transferring the active
crusade from the general Government to the separate States,
public attention should be directed to the one point at which the
conflict was most acute and irrepressible.

Previous to 1850 there had been no general acrimonious debate in
Congress on the rendition of fugitive slaves. About half of those
who had previously escaped from bondage had not taken the trouble
to go as far as Canada, but were living at peace in the Northern
States. Few people at the North knew or cared anything about the
details of a law that had been on the statute books since 1793.
Members of Congress were duly warned of the dangers involved in
any attempt to enforce a more stringent law than the previous act
which had proved a dead letter. To those who understood the
conditions, the new law also was doomed to failure. So said
Senator Butler of South Carolina. An attempt to enforce it would
be met by violence.