“Rev. Dr. Gannett, of Boston, was impressed with the immensity of this question, the terrible awfulness that lay behind it, and he would discuss it with all solemnity and seriousness in view of the impending evil. He believed in his heart the maintenance of government, the comfort of the people, _and the perpetuity of our Union depended on the support of the Fugitive Law_. He would not have the subject treated lightly, but prayerfully, fearfully, in view of the great responsibilities resting upon it. We should respect private convictions, and allow the integrity of motives of those who differ with us. “Rev. Mr. Ellis, of Charlestown, hailed that day as the first when these differences had been rightly discussed. But if the Conference, comprising members of different though honest views, should take ground on this question, he should leave it. As an organized body we have nothing to do with it. No action could be binding, and he was unwilling to have the Conference interfere with the question. He had himself ever entertained ultra-abolition views, and did now; but he had no such fears for the Union as Brother Gannett. If the Union was held together by so feeble a tenure as here presented, he thought it was not worth saving; and further, if our Northern land is to be the scouring-ground of slave-hunters, the sooner the Union was sundered the better. But our sphere of action did not allow interference with the question. “Dr. Gannett spoke of the character of that parishioner of his who returned a slave (Curtis). He had done so from convictions of his constitutional obligations as an upholder of law and as a good citizen, and he esteemed that a wrong was done him in stigmatizing him as a ‘cruel’ man, because of that return, as the resolution expressed it. “On motion of Mr. Pierpont, the word ‘cruel’ was stricken out, and the resolution having been previously altered so as to make it a proposition for discussion rather than as a test for votes, it was entered upon the records. “The debate (of which I have given a very limited sketch) here terminated by general consent, the feeling being almost unanimous as expressed by the majority of the speakers.” But the Unitarians as a body were by no means redeemed from the moral thraldom in which the whole nation was held. There was still among them so little heartfelt abhorrence of slavery and the Fugitive Slave Law, that the year after Mr. Fillmore was dropped from the presidency of the nation, which he had so dishonored, he was specially invited to preside at the Annual Festival of the Unitarians, to be given, if I remember correctly, in Faneuil Hall. He declined the honor proffered him, but our denomination was left to bear the shame of having asked him to receive an expression of our respect, as there was no protest against the action of the Committee. THE RESCUE OF JERRY.