The Jerry McHenry Rescue and the Growth of Northern ...jrudy/History/Jerry Rescue/The Jerry...

The Jerry McHenry Rescue and the Growth of Northern Antislavery Sentiment during the1850sAuthor(s): Jayme A. SokolowSource: Journal of American Studies, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Dec., 1982), pp. 427-445Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British Association for AmericanStudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27554201Accessed: 20/02/2010 20:05

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The Jerry McHenry Rescue and the Growth of Northern

Antislavery Sentiment during the 1850s JAYME A. SOKOLOW

In his second annual message to the Congress on 2 December 1851, President Millard Fillmore defended his administration's enforcement of the

Fugitive Slave Law. Although "lawless and violent mobs"1 had resisted

federal officers trying to enforce the statute, he happily noted that resistance

was sporadic and ineffectual :

I congratulate you and the country upon the general acquiescence in these

measures of peace which has been exhibited in all parts of the Republic ... [T] he

spirit of reconciliation which has been manifested in regard to them [the 1850 compromise measures] in all parts of the country has removed doubts and un

certainties in the minds of thousands of good men

concerning the duration of our

popular institutions and given renewed assurance that our

liberty and our Union

may subsist together for the benefit of this and succeeding generations.2

Fillmore also received support from both the Democrats and Whigs; at their

national conventions in 1852 they pledged to honor the Compromise of 1850 and earnestly hoped that sectional differences would wane.3

While abolitionists such as Theodore Parker denounced the Fugitive Slave

Jayme A. Sokolow teaches in the Department of History, Texas Tech University, Box 4529, Lubbock, Texas 79409.

1 James D. Richardson, Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents,

1789-189J, 10 vols. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1907), 5, 137.

2 Ibid., 5, 138-39.

3 Kirk H. Porter and Donald Bruce Johnson, eds., National Party Platforms, 1840 1860 (Urbana, 111.: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1961), pp. 17, 21.

Amer. Stud. 16, 3, 427-45 Printed in Great Britain

0021-8758/82/BAAS-3005 $01.50 ? 1982 Cambridge University Press

428 Jay me A. So\olow

Law and promised "to rescue any fugitive slave from the hands of any officer who attempts to return him to bondage,"4 even antislavery advocates

admitted that between the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska

Act of 1854 most northerners were willing to obey the law in order to

mollify the South and prevent the disruption of the Union. During this four

year period the Fugitive Slave Law was effectively enforced throughout the

northern and border states; only nine accused fugitives were rescued from

federal custody as compared with one hundred and sixty slaves who were

remanded by federal tribunals or returned without due process.5 As Horace

Greeley wrote about the early 1850s, most Americans desired "peace and

prosperity, and were nowise inclined to cut each other's throats and burn

each other's houses in a general quarrel concerning (as they regarded it) only the status of negroes."6 Only after the Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the

Missouri Compromise did northern public opinion become more hostile

toward the Fugitive Slave Law. But the federal government continued

successfully to enforce the statute; throughout the decade 82.3 percent of all

accused runaways were remanded to their owners.7

The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law culminated a decade of frustration

for the antislavery crusade. Although the abolitionist movement gained adherents during the 1840s, moral suasion, political agitation, and legal action failed to contain or diminish slavery as the Mexican War and the

Compromise of 1850 signalled the apparent growth of the peculiar institu

tion. The Constitution also was slipping away from the abolitionists. Federal

and state court decisions were decidedly adverse to the novel arguments of

antislavery lawyers and the judicial system actively promoted the rendition

of fugitive slaves.8 Abolitionists might complain that by "a dash of the

Commissioner's pen" an accused runaway

was transformed from "a human

4 John Weiss, Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parser, Minister of the Twenty

Eighth Congregational Society, Boston, 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton, 1864), I, 102.

5 Stanley W. Campbell, The Slave Catchers: Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law,

1850-1860 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), pp. 199-202, 207. 6 Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History, 2 vols. (Washington D.C. :

National Tribune, 1902), 1, 210-11. 7

Campbell, pp. 49-95, 207. 8 Robert M. Cover, Justice Accused: Antislavery and the Judicial Process (New Haven

and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1975), pp. 159-91; William M. Wiecek, The Sources

of Antislavery Constitutionalism in America, 1760?1848 (Ithaca: Cornell Univ.

Press, 1977), pp. 249-90; Thomas D. Morris, Free Men All: The Personal Liberty Laws of the North, iy8o?i86i (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1974),

pp. 130-218; Norman L. Rosenberg, "Personal Liberty Laws and the Sectional

Crisis: 1850?1861," Civil War History, 17 (1971), 25?45.

Growth of Northern Antislavery Sentiment during the 1850s 429

being into property,"9 but most Americans in the early 1850s concurred with

the measure. The public's seeming acquiescence and the federal govern ment's unsparing efforts to return fugitives goaded even many pacifist abolitionists into unprecedented acts of civil disobedience and violence. They became more militant and openly defended disunion, d?fiance of the slave

power conspiracy, and violence against the hated new Fugitive Slave Law.10

Perhaps the most dramatic and influential early instance of resistance was

the rescue of the runaway slave Jerry McHenry in Syracuse, New York, on

1 October 1851. This pro-abolitionist riot was a harbinger of growing northern opposition to the strident demands of the South and its northern

allies and also an illustration of the concomitant development of antislavery sentiment in the north during the decade before the Civil War.11

II

Because Syracuse was militantly opposed to slavery and the Fugitive Slave

Law, the city had already become a focus of national attention in the con

troversy surrounding the recent statute. Located in western New York, this

city of 21,901 whites and 370 blacks in 1850 was originally settled by a

stream of migrants from New England who brought with them their

churches, schools, and piety. "Almost every free state has its New England within its borders,"12 Vermont Senator Justin Morrill aptly observed.

Throughout the north and midwest these little New Englands were centers

of literacy, religion, reform and antislavery agitation. The larger cities, with

their commercial ties to the South and their growing immigrant populations, 9

Remarks of James W. Stone in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, April 13,

1855 (Boston: n.p., 1855). 10

Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, "Confrontation and Abolition in the 1850s,"

Journal of American History, 58 (1972), 923-37; They Who Would Be Free:

Blac\sy Search for Freedom, 1830-1861 (New York: Atheneum, 1974), pp. 233-50; Merton C. Dillon, The Abolitionists: The Growth of a Dissenting Minority (Dekalb,

111.: Northern Illinois Univ. Press, 1974), pp. 219-46; Carleton Mabee, Blac\ Free

dom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists From 1830 Through the Civil War (New York:

Macmillan, 1970), pp. 185-332; Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and

the Government of God in Antislavery Thought (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1973)5

pp. 231-94. 11 For a pioneering narrative account of the Jerry rescue, see W. Freeman Galpin,

"The Jerry Rescue," New Yor\ History, 26 (1945), 19-34. Three brief, modern

accounts of the Jerry rescue differ widely in their narratives and analyses. See

Dillon, pp. 186-87; Benjamin Quarles, Blac\ Abolitionists (New York: Oxford

Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 209-11; James Brewer Stewart, Holy Warriors: The

Abolitionists and American Slavery (New York: Hill and Wang, 1976), pp. 124,

154-55 12

Congressional Globe, 36 Congress, 2 Session, 663.


tended to be more conservative, but in western New York's burned-over

district New Englanders settled in large numbers and supported the abolition

ist crusade.

While the Senate was debating the Fugitive Slave Law, Samuel Joseph

May, a transplanted New Englander and Syracuse's most famous pacifist and abolitionist, attended a Fugitive Slave Convention in the nearby Finger Lakes village of Cazenovia where abolitionists pledged to aid runaway slaves

in preserving their precarious freedom.13 Only eight days after Fillmore had

signed the Law, a local Syracuse newspaper called for a public meeting to

disscuss the new enactment.14 On 4 October Samuel R. Ward, a distin

guished black orator, denounced the statute before an estimated five hundred

people who met in the Syracuse city hall.15 He was followed by the Reverend

Jermain W. Loguen, a fugitive slave who had studied at the Oneida Institute

and had become a respected Syracuse teacher and minister. In his lecture,

Loguen dramatically portrayed the consequences of the law for both blacks

and whites :

And do you think that I can be taken away from you and my wife and children,

and be a slave in Tennessee? ... This hellish enactment has precipitated

the

conclusion that white men must live in dishonorable submission, and colored men

be slaves, or they

must give their

physical as well as intellectual powers to the

defense of human rights. ... I don't respect this law

? I don't fear it ? I won't

obey it.16

By the conclusion of the speech everyone was standing and screaming "the

chair! the chair!" Alfred H. Hovey, the Democratic mayor who was presid

ing over the meeting, immediately made a brief but persuasive speech

linking the defense of human liberty with civil disobedience. He vowed that

the "colored man must be protected

- he must be secure

among us. . . . We

are right - this is a righteous and holy cause."17 The Business Committee

supported these speeches by reporting thirteen resolutions denouncing the

Fugitive Slave Law, President Fillmore, and Daniel Webster. A biracial

Vigilance Committee was created to insure that no Syracuse fugitive slaves

were deprived of their liberty. Any member who believed a runaway was

13 National Anti-Slavery Standard, 26 Aug. 1850. 14

Syracuse Star, 14 Oct. 1850; Samuel Joseph May, Jr, B. Emerson, and Thomas J.

Mumford, eds., Memoir of Samuel Joseph May (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1873),

p. 218; Jermain W. Loguen, The Rev. J. W. Loguen, as a Slave and as a Freeman

(Syracuse: J. G. K. Truair & Co., 1859), pp. 368-69; Earl E. Sperry, The Jerry Rescue (Syracuse: Onondaga Historical Association, 1924), pp. 18-19. This narrative

study contains many eyewitness accounts of the events surrounding the rescue. 15 New Yor\ Tribune, 12 Oct. 1850. 16

Loguen, pp. 391?92. 17

Ibid., p. 395.


endangered should toll a special signal on the bell of the local Presbyterian church to alert the Committee, which presumably would meet quickly and

devise a rescue plan.18

For May,

as for many Syracuse citizens, the enact

ment of the Fugitive Slave Law marked a shift from moral suasion and

political action to explicit defiance and violent disobedience.

During the next year Syracuse remained a national center for opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law. In January 1851 George Thompson, a prominent

British abolitionist, was the featured speaker at an anti-Fugitive Slave Law

demonstration. Two months later May appeared at a local

antislavery conven

tion with five fugitive slaves who had been brought to his Church of the

Messiah, a Unitarian depot on the underground railroad. "Shall these

fugitives be taken from Syracuse?" He asked rhetorically. "No" responded the audience. "Will you defend with your lives?" "Yes," answered his

fellow abolitionists.19 And in the late spring William Lloyd Garrison led the

American Anti-slavery Society to Syracuse for three days of spirited meet

ings.20 May and other western New York abolitionists were confident that

Syracuse would defy the Fugitive Slave Law. "We must trample this

infamous law under foot," May asserted. "It will agitate the country, as it

never has been agitated before, and if we do right, it will hasten rather than

retard the consummation, of the antislavery reform."21 W. H. Burleigh,

another Syracuse abolitionist, agreed with May. In a letter to Gerrit Smith

he proudly noted his city's resistance to the law and accurately predicted how Syracuse would react to the Fillmore administration's determination to

enforce the statute. "The meetings held in this city on that subject have been

indeed great and good.

... It would be almost certain death to a slave-catcher

to appear, on his infernal mission in our streets. No fugitive can be taken

from our midst."22

Like other members of the Fillmore administration, Daniel Webster

believed that Syracuse provided an important test for the Fugitive Slave Law.

After the Compromise of 1850, he traveled throughout New England and 18

Ibid., pp. 396-98; May, Emerson, and Mumford, p. 218; Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 3 vols. (Boston: Houghton, Miiflin

and Co., 1872), 2, 306. 19 The Liberator, 21 March 1851. 20 Samuel Joseph May, Some Recollections of Our Anti-Slavery Conflict (Boston: Fields,

Osgood & Co., 1869), pp. 361-62; Anti-Slavery Bugle, 5 April 1851. 21 The Liberator, 25 Oct. 1850. 22 W. H. Burleigh to Gerrit Smith, 17 Oct. 1850, in Ralph Volney Harlow, Gerrit

Smith, Philanthropist and Reformer (New York: H. Holt, 1939), pp. 289?90.

Burleigh was a staunch defender of higher law doctrines, believing that "every true

lover of humanity is bound to refuse it [the Fugitive Slave Law] obedience, and is

bound to go on persevering in obedience to the higher law." See Anti-Slavery Bugle, 12

July 1851.


New York arguing that "

there is but one all-absorbing question and that is

the preservation of the Union."23 Being convinced that the issue of slavery could not be settled until slaveholders were confident their property was

protected, he lashed out at the ''fanatical and factious abolitionists of the

north,"24 whose illegal actions threatened to destroy the harmony between

the sections. In Syracuse, where he spoke on 22 and 26 May 1851,25 he

denounced the abolitionists and issued a stern challenge :

I am a lawyer and I value my reputation

as a lawyer

more than anything else, and

I tell you, if men get together and declare a law of Congress shall not be executed in any case, and assemble in numbers to

prevent the execution of such a law, they are traitors, and are

guilty of treason, and bring upon themselves the penalties of

the law.

. . . Depend upon it, the law will be executed in its spirit, and to its letter. It will

be executed in all the great cities; here in Syracuse; in the midst of the next

Anti-slavery Convention, if the occasion shall arise; then we shall see what

becomes of their lives and their sacred honor.26

Webster's pious references to the Constitution were cheered but his remarks

about the Fugitive Slave Law aroused ominous murmurs of disapproval.27

Ill

The Fillmore administration's ability to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law was

tested by the events of 1 October 1851. Around noon, Jerry McHenry, a

mulatto working in a Syracuse cabinet shop, was seized and handcuffed by three deputy marshalls and a policeman who told him a warrant had been

issued for his arrest on suspicion of theft. When Jerry arrived at the United

States Commissioner's office, however, he was informed that charges had

been filed against him, under the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law, as an

escaped Missouri slave.28

McHenry had in fact been born of a slave mother in Buncombe County,

23 Daniel Webster, The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster, 18 vols. (Boston:

Little, Brown & Company, 1903), 4, 231. 2*

Ibid., 13, 435. 25

Syracuse Star, 24, 27 May 1851; May, pp. 373-74. For the full text of Webster's

Syracuse addresses, see Webster, 13, 408?28. 26

Ibid., 13, 419-20. 27

Syracuse Star, 28 May 1851. 28 Anne Kathleen Baker, A History of Old Syracuse, 1654-1899 (Fayetteville, N.Y.:

Manlius Publishing Company, 1941), p. 109; Syracuse Herald, 1 Sept. 1899; May,

p. 374; Loguen, Rev. J. W. Loguen, p. 400; The Liberator, 10 Oct. 1851; National

Intelligencer, 7 Oct. 1851.


North Carolina, around 1815. His family traveled throughout the South and

finally settled in Marion County, Missouri. There he learned to read and

became a skilled carpenter, farmer, and mechanic; his second owner con

sidered him a shrewd businessman. He probably left Missouri in 1843,

evading capture by his owner's son-in-law who unsuccessfully searched for

him in Chicago and Milwaukee. After his escape, he was sold on 8 July

1851 to John McReynolds, the man who was now initiating proceedings for

his return. Jerry's destination had been Canada, but Syracuse's economic

opportunities and racial toleration had so impressed him that he had remained

there and labored successively in a cooperage and cabinet shop. Bright and

likeable, he was known in the community as a

responsible worker.29

The first of October was an inopportune day to reclaim a fugitive slave in

Syracuse. The city was full of visitors; the Onondaga County Agricultural

Society was holding a fair and the local Liberty Party convention, filled with

a small but fiesty group of abolitionists, was in session at the Congregational Church. As the carriages containing Jerry and the officers approached the

courthouse, the news spread that the first arrest of a runaway slave had just occurred in Syracuse. When Charles A. Wheaton interrupted the Liberty

Party convention to announce Jerry's arrest, the abolitionists hurriedly

adjourned, rang the bell of the Presbyterian Church, and ran to the Com

missioner's office. May was finishing lunch when he heard the signal;

arriving at the scene of Jerry's arraignment, he was surprised to find a crowd

of about two thousand people outside angrily demanding the prisoner's release.

Inside, May discovered that the hearing had already begun. In the court

room were James Lear, a resident of Marion County, who had agreed to

obtain the arrest of McReynold's fugitive slave, the sheriff of Marion County, Samuel Smith, who had the deed of Jerry's sale, the Federal marshalls, some

interested spectators, and Commissioner Joseph F. Sabine. By one o'clock,

government counsels Joseph Loomis and James R. Lawrance, Jr had begun their arguments. Leonard Gibbs and Gerrit Smith acted as defense counsels.

Lear, a neighbor of McReynold's, testified that he knew the alleged fugitive from 1820 to 1840. Jerry's attorney Gibbs could only delay and obstruct as

Commissioner Sabine waived all objections aside. The defense lawyer wanted

an adjournment to better prepare his case; the Commissioner also rejected this argument but stopped the proceedings for half an hour while the court

looked for a larger room. Without this delay, Jerry probably would have 29 Samuel Joseph May, The Fugitive Slave I^aw and Its Victims (New York: American

Anti-Slavery Society, 1861), p. 20; May, Emerson, and Mumford, Memoir of May,

p. 219; Syracuse Herald, 1 Sept. 1899; Syracuse Star, 4 Oct. 1851; Syracuse Daily

Journal, 16 Oct. 1851.


been convicted and sent back to Missouri. He realized that the judicial

proceedings inevitably would lead to a verdict of guilty and thus in despera tion he made a sudden dash for freedom. With the help of a sympathetic

spectator, Charles Merrick, he was shoved out the door and hurled down the

stairway, and then, still in his handcuffs, he staggered down the street.

Although a black man, Prince Jackson, tried to obstruct the police, he was

recaptured in a few minutes and taken back to the office in a dray. A large crowd followed the carriage but made no

attempt to rescue him as the arrest

ing officers shackled his legs and sat on him to prevent another escape.30 As a result of these events the crowd became enraged and probably would

have stormed the jail if May had not restrained them by advising the mob's

leaders to wait after dark when a rescue attempt surely would occur. The

sheriff met May, told him that Jerry was in a "perfect rage," and suggested that the Unitarian minister try to calm him. When May was alone with

Jerry, he comforted him and tried to give him hope. "Would you be calm

with these irons on you?" Jerry shouted back. "Take off these handcuffs, and then if I do not fight my way through these fellows . . . then you may

make me a slave." As Jerry continued to rant hysterically, May whispered,

"Jerry we are

going to rescue you; do be more

quiet." "How do I know

you can or will rescue me?" Jerry cried. May assured him that he would be

freed that night; Jerry then became more calm and lay down to rest.31

Meanwhile, Jerry's accusers and supporters

were planning

courses of

action. Commissioner Sabine and his associates decided to resume the hearing at five-thirty. While a large and noisy crowd continued to gather in the

square, the Vigilance Committee met at Dr. Hiram Hoyt's residence.

There twenty-seven men, including May, Ward, and Loguen, devised a

plan to rescue Jerry and hide him within the Syracuse city limits until things

quietened down. The Committee decided, in the words of Gerrit Smith, that

while Jerry might be freed," the moral effect of such an acquitted will be

nothing, to a bold and forceable rescue. A forceable rescue will demonstrate

the strength of public opinion against the possible legality of slavery and this

fugitive law in particular. It will honor Syracuse, and be a powerful example

everywhere."32 May agreed with this, giving strict orders that the police were

not to be injured. Perhaps because he feared violence, May did not participate

directly in the actual rescue.33

30 Loguen, pp. 398-408; May, Emerson, and Mumford, pp. 219-20; May, pp. 374-75;

Syracuse Herald, 1 Sept. 1899; Syracuse Star, 3 Oct. 1851. 31

May, Emerson and Mumford, p. 220; May, p. 376. 32

Loguen, p. 409. 33

May, Emerson, and Mumford, p. 220; May, pp. 377-78; The Liberator, 10 Oct.

1851.


A second examination before Commissioner Sabine began promptly at

five-thirty. D. D. Hillis, Leroy Morgan, and Henry Sheldon replaced Gibbs

and Smith as counsels for Jerry. Lear, who had been sent from Missouri to

reclaim Jerry, began testifying again but was constantly interrupted by

questions from Hillis. The crowd outside the building also made the proceed

ings uncomfortable by drowning out the testimony and by throwing rocks

through the windows. Although chief deputy marshall Henry Allen wanted

to continue the hearing, the Commissioner prudently adjourned the court

until eight o'clock the next morning.

Following this adjournment, Sabine returned home while several of Jerry's defenders tried to calm the crowd. Hillis and Ward told them that Jerry

undoubtedly would be freed through the legal process; Mayor Horace

Wheaton and the police justice also attempted to disperse the gathering. While the crowd cheered the speeches, they remained outside the fugitive's

guarded room in the rear of the Commissioner's office. By eight o'clock the

angry mob had grown to about two thousand who continued to shout and

throw stones. When the members of the Vigilance Committee arrived, the

rescue began in earnest as the crowd assaulted the building with clubs, axes,

and iron rods which had conveniently had been left in front of Charles

Wheaton's hardware store.34

Fortunately for the abolitionists the militia never appeared. Although chief deputy marshall Allen did not know about the Vigilance Committee's

secret meetings, the presence of a large crowd outside the police office con

vinced him that he needed more manpower. Allen persuaded William C.

Gardiner, the county sheriff, to assemble the National Guards, the Syracuse Citizens Corps, and the Washington Artillery. When Charles Wheaton and

Colonel Origen Vanderburgh of the 51st Regiment heard about Gardner's

orders, they went to the National Guard armory and convinced the lieutenant

in command not to move his troops. Later Vanderburgh sent a written order

to the lieutenant, allegedly with the approval of the sheriff, discharging his

company. The lieutenant of the Syracuse Citizens Corps also received an

order to disband and complied about two hours before the rescue began. The Washington Artillery marched to City Hall Park when the crowd

attacked the Commissioner's office. They fired ten blank shots with their one

cannon; ironically, this show of force aided the rescuers by adding to the

confusion. Thus about five marshalls faced an armed, determined party of

over two thousand rioters.35

34 Gurney S. Strong, Early Landmarks of Syracuse (Syracuse: Times Publishing Co.,

1894), pp. 280-85; Baker, p. in; May, Emerson, and Mumford, p. 221; Loguen,

p. 411; Syracuse Star, 15 Oct. 1851; Syracuse Standard, 15 Oct. 1851. 35

Syracuse Star, 3, 4, 5, 8 Oct. 1851. The sheriff, according to Jermain Loguen, was


The enraged mob smashed the remaining windows of the Commissioner's

office and destroyed the outside door with a ten foot wooden battering ram.

As the building was beseiged, one of the marshalls opened the inner door and

fired twice, injuring one man. When the door to Jerry's room was loosened, the gas jets were turned off so that the building was shrouded in darkness.

In terror, Jerry's guards covered themselves with boxes or hid in the closet,

leaving the frightened fugitive shackled and lying on the floor. One guard ordered Jerry to "Go out -

why the devil don't you go?" "How can I go,"

Jerry replied, "Are you so cowardly crazy as not to know you have chained me so I can't go." The hapless marshall quickly opened the door, pushed

Jerry out, and crawled back into the closet. The fugtive, who could not walk

because he had been injured that afternoon, was hoisted out of the jail to the

accompaniment of cheers.36

Instead of taking Jerry outside the city, his rescuers drove him around

town, had his irons removed at a blacksmith's shop, and then hid him at

Caleb Davis's house. This sixty-year-old butcher was a staunch Democrat who had always opposed May. Despite his reputation, Davis deeply resented the intrusion of the slavery controversy into the community and thus gladly agreed to keep Jerry. For four days the authorities searched Syracuse for the

runaway but never considered examining the house of a loyal Democrat. On

Sunday, Davis took his weekly drive into the countryside to collect beef with

Jerry in the bottom of the cart, armed and covered with sacking. A team of fleet horses had been furnished by Jason Woodruff, the former Democratic

mayor of Syracuse. When the police discovered that Jerry had escaped, a

few people in wagons tried to capture Davis. Their attempt was foiled by the

tollkeeper on the Cicero plank road, who delayed pursuit by feigning sleep. Davis prudently had driven over the route two hours earlier and bribed all the tollkeepers to ensure his safe passage.

The next morning Jerry arrived at the farm of a wealthy Democratic farmer who hid and fed him. From there he was taken to Oswego, put aboard a British schooner, and escaped to Kingston, Ontario, where he lived in freedom as a cooper. From Canada he penned a grateful letter of thanks to Syracuse's abolitionists. The Vigilance Committee sent President Fillmore a box containing Jerry's shackles as a momento of the rescue; they did not

quite sympathetic to the rescue. During the afternoon of i October he confidently told one of Jerry's supporters, "I am a public officer and must keep the peace

- but betwixt you and me there is no difficulty y See Loguen, p. 410. 36 Baker, pp. 111-12; Strong, pp. 281-86; May, Emerson, and Mumford, pp. 220-21;

Loguen, pp. 417-18; Samuel Ringgold Ward, Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro:

His Anti-Slavery labours in the United States, Canada, & England (London: J. Snow, 1855), pp. 117-28.


want the Whig administration to forget that Webster's promises had not

been kept. In Ontario Jerry died of tuberculosis on 8 October 1853.a7

Although Syracuse mourned the fugitive's untimely death, its citizens joy

fully went on commemorating the Jerry rescue until the Civil War. "No

Robbery of Man's Inalienable Rights can be law" was the slogan of the first

meeting, which attracted 2,500 people including Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Lucretia Mott, and many of Jerry's indicted

rescuers.38 The city's belief in the inviolability of human freedom had led it

to a violent but successful confrontation with the federal government.

IV

Throughout antebellum America, collective violence such as the Jerry rescue

was used to accomplish political goals and express community values. In

Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, for example, there were

thirty-five major riots between 1830 and i860; northern abolitionists re

ported 209 violent disorders in the 1830s and 1840s. Rioting was a frequent and effective means by which groups attempted to control competition

among themselves or respond

to challenges

to their status, power, wealth, or

political influence. From anti-immigrant riots to election-day brawls, group violence was a pervasive part of American life in the decades before the

Civil War.39 No wonder Abraham Lincoln complained that "Accounts of

37 May, Recollections, pp. 378-79; Loguen, pp. 422-24; The Liberator, 24 Oct. 1851;

Frederic^ Douglass' Paper, 8 April 1852, 4 Feb., 4 March 1853. 38

Anti-Slavery Bugle, 25 Sept. 1852; Frederic^ Douglass' Paper, 29 Oct. 1852. By

19 November 1851 a federal grand jury in Buffalo had indicted twenty-six people for participating in the Jerry Rescue. In January of 1853 Enoch Reed was found

guilty but died while an appeal was being heard. W. S. Salmon was tried and

acquitted and a jury was divided on two other defendants. The remaining cases

were postponed and later dropped because it proved impossible to empanel a jury

which had no decided opinions about the Fugitive Slave Law. The rescuers had

Henry Allen, the United States marshall who arrested Jerry, indicted on a charge of

kidnapping; he was quickly acquitted because the jury agreed Allen was legally

executing a Federal law. For accounts of the indictments and the trials, see the

National Intelligencer, 21 Nov. 1851; Samuel Joseph May to William Lloyd

Garrison, 15 Oct. 1851, in Wendell Phillips Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison:

The Story of His Life Told by his Children, 4 vols. (Boston and New York:

Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1894), 3, 335; Loguen, pp. 426-42; Trial of

Henry W. Allen, U.S. Deputy Marshall, for Kidnapping, with Arguments of Counsel & Charge of Justice Marvin, on the Constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave

Law, in the Supreme Court of New Yor\ (Syracuse: Daily Journal Office, 1852). 39 Richard Maxwell Brown, Strain of Violence: Historical Studies of American

Violence and Vigilantism (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1975), pp. 91-143;

43 8 Jay me A. So\olow

outrages committed by mobs form the every-day news of the times. They have pervaded the country, from New England to Louisiana. .. . Whatever,

then, their cause may be, it is common to the whole country."40

The pro-abolitionist violence of the Jerry rescuers differed from the com

mon types of antebellum group violence in two respects. First, most rioting

during this era was either

expressive or

preservationist. Expressive rioting,

which included gang fights, firemen's brawls, election riots, and labor

violence, reinforced the rioters' own sense of solidarity and communicated it

to the outside world. Preservationist groups used collective violence to impose their dominance over alleged outsiders -

Catholics, Mormons, blacks, or

abolitionists.41 The Jerry rescue, by contrast, combined both forms. The

Vigilance Committee and its supporters were trying to cement community

solidarity, express their sense of justice, and apply moral values against a

group which was perceived as consisting of either aliens or intruders. In

Syracuse, they were Commissioner Sabine and the deputy marshalls, who

were local residents, and the two men from Missouri, James Lear and Marion

County sheriff Samuel Smith. The Jerry rescue did not represent an internal

conflict in which abolitionists triumphed over Syracuse pro-slavery advocates

but instead was a community demonstration against a distant enemy and its

local law enforcers.

Second, the collective violence of the Jerry rescue marked the development of a novel type of strife in pre-Civil War America: pro-abolitionist rioting.

As Leonard L. Richards has cogently argued with regard to the 1830s, abolitionists were often the victims of "gentlemen of property and standing"

who saw themselves as guardians of civic order, public morality, and the law.

Antislavery crusaders, they feared, defied the right of local residents to

develop their own patterns of behavior. The abolitionists' evangelical fervor

Michael Feldberg, The Philadelphia Riots of 1844: A Study of Ethnic Conflict (Westport Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1975); Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill,

Carthage Conspiracy : The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith (Urbana, 111.: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1975); Sam Bass Warner Jr, The Private City: Phila

delphia in Three Periods of Its Growth (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania

Press, 1968), pp. 125-57; Paul O. Weinbaum, Mobs and Demogogues: The New

Yor\ Response to Collective Violence in the Early 19th Century (Ann Arbor, Mich. :

UMI Press, 1978); Ray A. Billington, The Protestant Crusade, 1800-1860: A Study of the Origins of American Natavism (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1938);

David Grimsted, "Rioting in Its Jacksonian Setting," American Historical Review,

77 (1972), 361-97; Clement Eaton, "Mob Violence in the Old South," Mississippi

Valley Historical Review, 29 (1942), 351-70. 40

Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Worlds of Abraham Lincoln, 9 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1953-55), I, 109.

41 Michael Feldberg, The Turbulent Era: Riot and Disorder in Jacksonian America

(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1980).


and appeals to individual conscience threatened traditional forms of parental,

religious, and community authority. Richards discovered that in cities such as Utica and Cincinnati, lawyers, bankers, financiers, merchants, and sturdy

artisans rioted to expel abolitionists who tried to impose alien standards on

the local citizenry. In New York state, which was second only to Ohio in

anti-abolitionist activity, violence peaked in the mid-i830s. Even in the

burned-over district, rioters attacked antislavery advocates in Genessee,

Oswego, Ostego, Oneida, Allegany, Chautauqua, Erie, Niagara, and

Madison counties.42 Yet by the 1850s these areas had become abolitionist

strongholds which openly rejected the Fugitive Slave Law. Why was

Syracuse, like many northern communities, so hostile toward the rendition of

runaways? By examining the Jerry rescuers, we can understand better the

reasons why the city declared its communal solidarity by violently resisting the federal government.

To compare the Jerry rescuers with the anti-abolitionist mobs in Utica

(1835) and Cincinnati (1836), I have assembled data on the Syracuse rioters

from contemporary newspapers, court proceedings, eyewitness accounts, and

memoirs (see Appendix I). Police records could not be used because all the

police material prior to 1870 has been lost. Unfortunately, this has meant

that almost all of the fifty-two male participants who could be positively identified were active and prominent local abolitionists. Richards was able to

compile much more representative lists because in Utica the abolitionists and

their opponents published the names of nearly all the rioters and in Cincinnati

the records of arrests and reports of judicial proceedings were more complete than in Syracuse.43 Nevertheless, by using the occupational classifications of

Sidnev Aronson,44 we can compare the three different mobs and so uncover

significant differences and similarities in occupation and motivation.

42 Leonard L. Richards, "

Gentlemen of Property and Standing": Anti-Abolition Mobs

in Jacksonian America (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970). For a similar argu ment see Lorman A. Ratner, "Northern Concern for Social Order as Cause of

Rejecting Anti-Slavery, 1831-1840," The Historian, 28 (1965), 1-18; Powder Keg: Northern Opposition to the Anti-Slavery Movement, 1831?1840 (New York: Basic

Books, 1968). 43

Richards, pp. 134-50. I have excluded considering the New York City riot of 1836

because, as Richards admits, it was atvpical of antebellum anti-abolitionist violence. 44

Sidney Aronson, Status and Kinship in the Higher Civil Service: Standards of Selection in the Administrations of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew

Jackson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1964). Aronson constructed a

two-tiered classification of high- and middle-ranking occupations. The highest

category includes occupations such as merchant, banker, bank cashier, landed

gentry, college president, lawyer, professor, minister, and doctor. The middle

category involves occupations such as clerk, shopkeeper, editor, tavernkeeper, and

teacher. Richards also uses the Aronson classification system.

44? Jay me A. So\olow

Perhaps the most striking difference between the anti-abolitionist and the

abolitionist riots was the active participation of blacks in fugitive slave rescues. Of the fifty-two Syracuse abolitionists involved in the Jerry rescue, seven were blacks: Prince Jackson, Samuel R. Ward, Jermain W. Loguen, Peter Hallenbeck, William Gray, James Baker, and Enoch Reed. Sometimes

led by white abolitionists, but also acting on their own initiative, blacks in

northern communities demonstrated a willingness to prevent the rendition of

fellow blacks. Some of these protesters were themselves in a precarious

position because they too were fugitive slaves. After the indictment of the

Jerry rescuers, two black members of the Vigilance Committee, Ward and

Loguen, avoided prosecution by fleeing to Canada. Throughout the decade, both free and runaway blacks played a prominent role in almost all the

attempted fugitive slave rescues.45

Interestingly, the whites involved in the Jerry rescue came from occupa tions which had also been well represented among the earlier anti-abolitionist

rioters in Cincinnati and Utica. In those two cities, a disproportionate num

ber of commercial and professional men had rioted against the abolitionists.

Richards calculated that about three-fourths of those involved were profes sionals, merchants, bank keepers, shopkeepers, or clerks. Many were descended

from old and distinguished families closely identified with the mercantile

economy of Jeffersonian and early Jacksonian America. The abolitionists in

those cities, by way of contrast, had a lower proportion of commercial and

professional supporters and many were manufacturers or artisans, foreigners, and members of evangelical churches. The differing social composition of the two groups, according to Richards, indicated that men rioted against the

abolitionists because the anti-slavery crusade challenged local patterns of

authority and influence.46

In Syracuse similarly, a disproportionate number of commercial and

professional people participated in the Jerry rescue. S. H. Potter, for example, was a member of the Board of Trustees and the faculty of the Syracuse Medical College. John Wilkinson, a lawyer, served on the Board of Directors of the Syracuse City Waterworks, the New York, Albany and Buffalo

Telegraph Company, the Rochester and Syracuse Railroad, and was president of the Syracuse and Utica Railroad. E. W. Leavenworth also was a director of the same corporation. And Vivus W. Smith edited the Syracuse Daily 45

Ward, pp. 429-34; Loguen, pp. 133-226. 46

Richards, pp. 134-50. Gerald Sorin, in his study of antebellum New York abolition

ists, also discovered that they included many farmers, manufacturers, and artisans who pursued careers

requiring broadly applicable skills not dependent upon

traditionally determined status. See Sorin, The New Yor\ Abolitionists: A Case

Story of Political Radicalism (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1971).


Journal. Using as an index those

Jerry rescuers whose occupations

are known,

it would appear that they represented the financial and professional elite of a

prosperous commercial center, twenty-eight of them (68 percent) being

professional and commercial men, viz:

lawyers ?

4, ministers -

6, merchants ?

6, physicians ?

4, teacher ?

1, journalists ?

2, clerks ?

2, newspaper editors

? 3. Of the remaining thirteen (32 percent),

one was a manufacturer, seven

were skilled laborers and tradesmen, and only five were unskilled or semi

skilled.

This occupational breakdown of the known Jerry rescuers is remarkably like the abolitionists' analysis of their adversaries. Throughout the antebellum

era, they believed that their opponents were commercial and professional men who incited mechanics and the lower orders into rioting.47 "Purse

proud aristocrats" provoked "penniless profligates,'' according to abolition

ists such as William Goodell and Lydia Maria Child, because northern elites

were tied to southern economic and political institutions and thus regarded the emancipation struggle

as a threat to their status.48 The Jerry rescue, how

ever, does not fit in with this popular abolitionist belief because the mob

contained so many people traditionally hostile to the antislavery crusade.

Why, then, did so many representatives of the major professional occupations in Syracuse participate in a pro-abolitionist riot ?

Based on Richards' analysis of anti-abolitionist mobs, we might conclude

that the Jerry rescue received widespread support because Syracuse's citizens

regarded the Fugitive Slave Law and its supporters in much the same way as

the anti-abolitionist mobs had previously perceived their opponents - as

dangerous intruders who threatened to weaken cherished values and destroy the power of local elites. Syracuse was a community that took pride in its

amicable race relations and republican institutions. Until the passage of the

Fugitive Slave Law, neither the local nor the federal government seriously threatened community autonomy. But after 1850, Syracuse thwarted any

attempt to reclaim fugitive slaves because local citizens such as Sabine, Allen, his assistants, and the two Missouri residents were seen to be disrupting the

community consensus and imposing unacceptable standards on local citizens.

The Jerry rescuers pictured themselves defending the established order

against the encroachments of both resident law enforcement officers and

meddlesome outsiders. And, as in many of the pro-abolitionist riots, Syracuse's leaders assured the Jerry rescuers that they had done their duty by upholding the sanctity of public opinion. On 14 October a convention met in Syracuse

47 The Anti-Slavery Record, 2 (July 1836), 73-82. 48 American Anti-Slavery Society, Fourth Annual Report (New York: American Anti

Slavery Society, 1837), pp. 57-60.

44 2 Jay me A. So\olow

to "consider the principles of the American government, and the extent to

which they are trampled under foot by the fugitive slave law."49 There May and other local notables reiterated their opposition to slavery and declared

that Syracuse had not violated the law on i October. They had set aside an

"unnatural, cruel edict; they trampled upon tyranny."50 The city had vindi

cated the natural rights of man.

This hostile reaction to people who were perceived as intruders helps

explain why even diehard Democrats such as Caleb Davis and Jason Wood

ruff participated in the rescue. Such conversions occurred throughout the

country. John Parker Hale vehemently opposed local abolitionist lecturers in

1835, but in 1847 he became the Liberty Party's Presidential candidate and

in 1852 he headed the Free Soil ticket.51 Orsamus B. Matteson, who was

involved in the 1835 Utica riot, became a Radical Republican and a close

associate of Hale and Thaddeus Stevens.52 Apparently the antislavery crusade

was successful in convincing many northerners that the slave power was a

greater threat to their status and authority than organized abolitionism.53

The rejection of agitators who threatened local elites and community

autonomy, however, could in turn be used to attack abolitionists or deny blacks equal rights. When abolitionists argued that slavery was a menace to

the Union and a great evil, Syracuse citizens showed hostility toward the

South and slavery but nevertheless retained a belief in black inferiority. And

abolitionists could still be the objects of mob violence if local communities

were again persuaded that the antislavery crusade was threatening and dis

ruptive. During the secession crisis abolitionists were attacked and silenced

throughout upstate New York. In Buffalo, former Governor Horatio

Seymour led a mob that routed an antislavery gathering and passed reso

lutions supporting the Crittenden Compromise. Abolitionist speakers were

shouted down in Utica, Rochester, Rome, and Auburn. And in Syracuse, which had been a haven for runaway slaves and opponents of the Fugitive

49 Samuel Joseph May, Speech of the Rev. Samuel J. May, to the Convention of Citizens

of Onondaga County (Syracuse: Agan & Summers, Printers, 1851), p. 2. 5?

Ibid., p. 18. 51 Richard H. Sewell, John P. Hale and the Politics of Abolition (Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard Univ. Press, 1965). 52

Henry J. Cookingham, History of Oneida County, New Yor\, from iyoo to the

Present Time, 2 vols. (Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1912), 1, 252?54. 53 For excellent analyses of the slave power conspiracy concept, see R?ssel B. Nye,

Fettered Freedom (Urbana, 111.: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1972), pp. 282-315; David

Brion Davis, The Slave Power Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style (Baton Rouge, La. :

Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1969); The Fear of Conspiracy : Images of Un-American

Subversion from the Revolution to the Present (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1971),

pp. 102-48.


Slave Law, abolitionists were attacked by mobs wielding pistols and knives

and throwing rotten eggs. Effigies of Susan B. Anthony and Samuel Joseph

May were dragged through the streets and burned in the city square.54 When

abolitionists seemed to promote disunion by their militant ideology and

opposition to compromise, "gentlemen of property and standing" turned

against them again. Thus, even in Syracuse, abolitionists occupied a pre carious position. Their rallies and presence during the secession winter

inaugurated a season of mob violence unparalleled since the early years of the

antislavery movement.

We need more studies of pro-abolitionist mobs in northern cities in

order better to understand the growth of antislavery sentiment in the decade

before the Civil War. It is possible that Syracuse was an untypical northern

community because of its relatively homogeneous population and receptivity to reform causes. Nevertheless, the rhetoric, behavior, and

occupational

backgrounds of the Jerry rescuers and their supporters demonstrates that the

citizens of Syracuse supported the antislavery crusade for many of the same

reasons that mobs attacked abolitionists. Opposition to the slave power pro

moted community solidarity and reinforced widely accepted beliefs in oppo sition to those who seemed to threaten local elites and traditional authority

-

the South and its northern allies.

54 National Anti-Slavery Standard, 19, 26 Jan., 2, 9, 16 Feb. 1861; American Anti

Slavery Society, Twenty-Eighth Annual Report (New York: American Anti-Slavery

Society, 1861), pp. 182-88; May, Recollections, pp. 389-95.


Appendix I : Known Participants in the Jerry McHenry Rescue*

Occupation

Place of Residence Person Race

Samuel J. May white Syracuse Sereno F. King white Syracuse Prince Jackson black Syracuse Charles Merrick white Syracuse

Jason S. Hoyt white Syracuse Gerrit Smith white Petersboro

James Fuller white Syracuse R. William Pease white Syracuse Charles Wheaton white Syracuse Samuel R. Ward black Syracuse

Vivus W. Smith white Syracuse Charles B. Sedgwick white Syracuse Hiram Putnam white Syracuse E. W. Leavenworth white Syracuse

George Barnes white Syracuse Patrick H. Agan white Syracuse

John Wilkinson white Syracuse

John Thomas white Syracuse William C. Crandell white Syracuse Thomas G. White white unknown

George Carter white unknown

L. D. Mansfield white unknown

Joseph R. Johnson white Syracuse

S. H. Potter white Syracuse William L. Salmon white Granby

Jermain W. Loguen black Syracuse R. R. Raymond white Syracuse

Montgomery Merrick white Syracuse Abner Bates white Syracuse

James Bates white Syracuse

J. W. Clapp white Syracuse

James Baker black Syracuse Edward Hunt white Syracuse

George Carter white Syracuse Caleb Davis white Syracuse Peter Hallenbeck black Syracuse

James Parsons white Syracuse Lemuel Field white Syracuse

William Gray black Syracuse Samuel Thomas white Cazenovia

C. P. Noble white Fayetteville Ira H. Cobb white Syracuse

Washington Stikney white Canastota

Origen Vandeburgh white Syracuse Moses Sumner white Syracuse

Unitarian minister

teamster

barber and dyer brick layer

carriage manufacturer

landowner, businessman

druggist, physician

physician hardware store owner

Congregational minister

newspaper editor

lawyer clerk

lawyer

bookkeeper

newspaper editor

lawyer

newspaper editor

journalist unknown

unknown

minister (denomination

unknown) minister (denomination

unknown)

physician unknown

A. M. E. minister

minister (denomination

unknown) mason

tanner

food vendor

furnaceman

whitewasher

mason

unknown

butcher

unknown

blacksmith

unknown

laborer

unknown

unknown

hardware and mason

unknown

lawyer

journalist


Person Race

Enoch Reed black

John Hornbeck white

J. B. Brigham white

Lyman Clary white

Charles F. Williston white

Jason Woodruff white

D. O. Salmon white

Place of Residence Occupation

Syracuse unknown

Syracuse unknown

Syracuse schoolteacher

Syracuse physician

Syracuse cabinet shopowner

Syracuse livery

Syracuse tobacconist

* All occupations derived from the Daily Journal City Register and Directory, i8ji

i8j2 (Syracuse: Daily Journal Office, 1852).

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