in the predicament of the Quaker confronted by a fugitive with
wife and child who had seen a sister sold and conveyed to a life
of shame on a Southern plantation. "Am I going to stand by and
see them take my wife and sell her?" exclaimed the negro. "No,
God help me! I'll fight to the last breath before they shall take
my wife and son. Can you blame me?" To which the Quaker replied:
"Mortal man cannot blame thee, George. Flesh and blood could not
do otherwise. 'Woe unto the world because of offences but woe
unto them through whom the offence cometh.'" "Would not even you,
sir, do the same, in my place?" "I pray that I be not tried." And
in the ensuing events the Quaker played an important part.

Laws enacted for the protection of slave property are shown to be
destructive of the fundamental rights of freemen; they are
inhuman. The Ohio Senator, who in his lofty preserve at the
capital of his country could discourse eloquently of his
readiness to keep faith with the South in the matter of the
faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Law, becomes, when at
home with his family, a flagrant violator of the law. Elemental
human nature is pitted against the apparent interests of a few
individual slaveowners. The story of Uncle Tom placed all
supporters of the new law on the defensive. It was read by all
classes North and South. "Uncle Tom's Cabin as it is" was called
forth from the South as a reply to Mrs. Stowe's book, and there
ensued a general discussion of the subject which was on the whole
enlightening. Yet the immediate political effect of the
publication was less than might have been expected from a book so
widely read and discussed. Its appearance early in the decade did
not prevent the apparent pro-slavery reaction already described.
But Mr. Rhodes calls attention to the different impression which