CHAPTER XXV. MORE TERRITORY ACQUIRED

[17] Some miners obtained gold by digging the earth, putting it into a tin pan, pouring on water, and then shaking the pan so as to throw out the muddy water and leave the particles of gold. Others used a box mounted on rockers and called a "cradle" or "rocker."

[18] Read the speeches of Calhoun and Webster in Johnston's American Orations, Vol. II. Webster's speech gave great offense in the North. Read McMaster's Daniel Webster, pp. 314-324, and Whittier's poem Ichabod. The debate and its attendant scenes are well described in Rhodes's History of the U. S., Vol. I, pp. 104-189.

[19] The fugitive slave law gave great offense to the North. It provided that a runaway slave might be seized wherever found, and brought before a United States judge or commissioner. The negro could not give testimony to prove he was not a fugitive but had been kidnapped, if such were the case. All citizens were "commanded," when summoned, to aid in the capture of a fugitive, and, if necessary, in his delivery to his owner. Fine and imprisonment were provided for any one who harbored a fugitive or aided in his escape. The law was put in execution at once, and "slave catchers," "man hunters," as they were called, "invaded the North." This so excited the people that many slaves when seized were rescued. Such rescues occurred during 1851 at New York, Boston, Syracuse, and at Ottawa in Illinois. Read Wilson's Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Chap. 26.

In the midst of this excitement Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe published her story of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Mrs. Stowe's purpose was "to show the institution of slavery truly just as it existed." The book is rather a picture of what slavery might have been than of what slavery really was; but it was so powerfully written that everybody read it, and thousands of people in the North who hitherto cared little about the slavery issue were converted to abolitionism.