As the years passed on, and the people of the North became more and more opposed to the slave system of the South, the latter lost an increasing number of its slaves through escape to Canada. They were assisted in their flight by Northern sympathizers, who, secretly receiving them on the north bank of the Ohio River, passed them on from friend to friend until they reached the Canadian border. As this system of escape was contrary to law, it had to be conducted, by both white rescuers and black fugitives, with great privacy, often with much peril to life; hence it received the significant, popular name of "The Underground Railroad." Wisconsin had but small part in the working of the underground railroad, because it was not upon the usual highway between the South and Canada. But our people took a firm stand on the matter, sympathizing with the fugitive slaves and those who aided them on their way to freedom. When, therefore, Congress, in 1850, at the bidding of the Southern politicians, passed the Fugitive Slave Law, Wisconsin bitterly condemned it. This act was designed to crush out the underground railroad. It provided for the appointment, by federal courts, of commissioners in the several States, whose duty it should be to assist slaveholders and their agents in catching their runaway property. The unsupported testimony of the owner or agent was sufficient to prove ownership, the black man himself having no right to testify, and there being for him no trial by jury. The United States commissioners might enforce the law by the aid of any number of assistants, and, in the last resort, might summon the entire population to help them. There were very heavy penalties provided for violations of this inhuman law. The Fugitive Slave Law was denounced by most of the political conventions held in our State that year. In his message to the legislature, in January, 1851, Governor Dewey expressed the general sentiment when he said that it "contains provisions odious to our people, contrary to our sympathies, and repugnant to our feelings." But it was three years before occasion arose for Wisconsin to act. In the early months of 1854, a negro named Joshua Glover appeared in Racine, and obtained work in a sawmill four miles north of that place. On the night of the 10th of March, he was playing cards in his little cabin, with two other men of his race. Suddenly there appeared at the door seven well-armed white men,--two United States deputy marshals from Milwaukee, their four assistants from Racine, and a St. Louis man named Garland, who claimed to be Glover's owner. A desperate struggle followed, the result being that Glover, deserted by his comrades and knocked senseless by a blow, was placed in chains by his captors.