"curiously enough, the next thing I heard would be, that the fellow was in Canada." And when a colored man was actually sent back to slavery, as in the case of Burns, the event excited so much sympathy with the fugitive, and so much horror of the law, that its effects were disastrous to the slave power. Thomas M. Simms was arrested in Boston as a fugitive from slavery, April 3, 1851, and was sent to slavery by the decision of George Ticknor Curtis, a United States commissioner. The answer to this act, by Massachusetts, was the election of Charles Sumner, twenty-one days after, to the United States Senate. Anthony Burns was returned to slavery by order of Edward G. Loring, in May, 1854; and Massachusetts responded by removing him from his office as Judge of Probate, and refusing his confirmation as a professor in Harvard University. The passage of what were called the compromise measures of 1850, including the Fugitive Slave Law, had, it was fondly believed, put an end to the whole antislavery agitation. The two great parties, Whig and Democrat, had agreed that such should be the case. The great leaders, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, Cass and Buchanan, were active in calling on the people to subdue their prejudices in favor of freedom. Southern fire-eaters, like Toombs and Alexander Stephens, joined these Union-savers, and became apostles of peace. Agitation was the only evil, and agitation must now come to an end. Public meetings were held in the large cities,--one in Castle Garden in New York, another in Faneuil Hall in Boston. In these meetings the lion and the lamb lay down together. Rufus Choate and Benjamin Hallet joined in demanding that all antislavery agitation should now cease. The church was called upon to assist in the work of Union-saving, and many leading divines lent their aid in this attempt to silence those who desired that the oppressed should go free, and who wished to break every yoke. Many seemed to suppose that all antislavery agitation was definitely suppressed. President Fillmore called the compromise measures "a final adjustment." All the powers which control human opinion--the two great political parties, the secular and the religious newspapers, the large churches and popular divines, the merchants and lawyers--had agreed that the antislavery agitation should now cease.[52]