These few scattered facts will give some notion of the bitter feeling that prevailed during the first ten or twelve years of the fight against slavery in Ohio. Afterwards it became less intense, as slavery became a political question between the two great parties of that day, the Whigs and the Democrats. Neither party expected to abolish slavery, but the Whigs hoped to keep it out of the territories and all the new states. Both parties split upon this question at last, and in 1856 the anti-slavery Whigs and anti-slavery Democrats joined in forming the Republican party, which in 1860 elected Abraham Lincoln upon its promise to shut slavery up to the states where it already existed. But it must not be supposed, because the first bitter feeling had passed away, that the facts were changed or that the tragedies and outrages had ceased. After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, there was a new hunt for runaways all over the state, and business on the underground railroad was never so brisk. The hatred of slavery was revived in all its intensity by such cases as that of Margaret Gorden in 1856. This unhappy mother had escaped from Kentucky with her four children to the house of a free colored man below Mill Creek in Hamilton County, where they remained concealed with thirteen other fugitives. One night the place was suddenly attacked by the slavehunters under the lead of the United States officers. A fight followed, and several on both sides were wounded, but at last the slaves were overpowered. While the officers were dragging the others from the house, Margaret seized a knife from the table, and killed her little daughter rather than see it taken back to slavery, and then turned the bloody weapon against herself, but failed in the attempt on her own life. She was taken to Cincinnati and tried, not for murder, but for escaping from slavery, together with the other fugitives, who said they would “go singing to the gallows,” if only they need not go back to the South. They were all found guilty of seeking to be free, and were returned to their owners. On her way down the river it is said that Margaret jumped from the boat with one of her remaining little ones in her arms. The child was drowned, but Margaret was saved for the fate which she dreaded, and which she had twice risked her own and her children’s life to shun. What became of her at last was never known; it is only known that she was carried back to her owner. She had two deep scars on her black face. At her trial she was asked what made them, and she answered “White man struck me.”