But during this conflict came many very dark days for freedom. One of these was after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850. That law was one of a series of compromises, intended to make a final settlement of the question and to silence all antislavery agitation. Although defended by great lawyers, who thought it necessary to save the Union, there is little doubt that it was as unconstitutional as it was cruel. The Constitution declares that "no person shall be deprived of his liberty without due process of law," and also that "in suits at common law, when the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved." Anthony Burns was in full possession of his liberty; he was a self-supporting, tax-paying citizen of Massachusetts; and in ten days, by the action of the Fugitive Slave Law, he was turned into a slave under the decision of a United States commissioner, without seeing a judge or a jury. The passage of this law, and its actual enforcement, caused great excitement among the free colored people at the North, as well as among the fugitives from slavery. No one was safe. It was evident that it was meant to be enforced,--it was not meant to be idle thunder. But instead of discouraging the friends of freedom, it roused them to greater activity. More fugitives than ever came from the slave States, and the underground railroad was in fuller activity than before. The methods employed by fugitives to escape were very various and ingenious. One man was brought away in a packing-box. Another clung to the lower side of the guard of a steamer, washed by water at every roll of the vessel. One well-known case was that of Ellen Crafts, who came from Georgia disguised as a young Southern gentleman, attended by her husband as body-servant. She rode in the cars, sitting near Southerners who knew her, but did not recognize her in this costume, and at last arrived safe in Philadelphia. In one instance a slave escaped from Kentucky, with all his family, walking some distance on stilts, in order to leave no scent for the pursuing blood-hounds. When these poor people reached the North, and told their stories on the antislavery platform, they excited great sympathy, which was not confined to professed antislavery people. A United States commissioner, who might be called on to return fugitives to bondage, frequently had them concealed in his own house, by the action of his wife, whose generous heart never wearied in this work, and who was the means of saving many from bondage. A Democratic United States marshal, in Boston, whose duty it was to arrest fugitive slaves, was in the habit of telling the slave-owner who called on him for assistance that he "did not know anything about niggers, but he would find out where the man was from those who did." Whereupon he would go directly to Mr. Garrison's office and tell him he wanted to arrest such or such a man, a fugitive from slavery. "But," said he,