For this class Lancaster County’s then representative in Congress, Thaddeus Stevens, was the boldest and most aggressive spokesman. When, in 1851, he denounced every form of human slavery he was so far in advance of his party (Whig then and Republican ten years later) that in 1861 a Republican Congress, Charles Francis Adams, of Massachusetts, the first Free Soil Candidate for Vice President, heading the “Ayes,” by an overwhelming vote declared that all attempts of the States to override or obstruct the Fugitive Slave Law were unconstitutional and “dangerous to the peace of the Union”; that all enactments to that end should be repealed and there was no authority outside of a State wherein then existed a right “to interfere with slaves or slavery in such States, in disregard of the rights of their owners or the peace of society.” [Illustration: AN OLD SOUTHERN COOK. SLAVE AND SERVANT IN THE GORSUCH FAMILY. MORE THAN 100 YEARS OLD.] CHAPTER III. CONDITIONS ALONG THE BORDER. On the Different Sides of Mason and Dixon Line--Conflicts of Ideas and of Citizenship--Lower Lancaster County a Gateway--Terror of the “Gap Gang”--The Underground Railway--Outrages by the Slave Catchers and Kidnappers. Formal legislation and statutory enactments could not repress the instincts of humanity. Involuntary bondage of men, women and children was not consistent with either the spirit of free institutions or the instincts of a progressive citizenship. As it was impossible to prevent reckless and degenerate men from abusing the processes of the law by kidnapping and other forms of crime against the colored race; and as it was impossible for the most humane and philanthropic elements of slaveholding citizenship to prevent constantly recurring barbarities and horrors resulting logically from the legal recognition of property and traffic in human flesh and blood, so it was impossible to forbid thousands of good men and women throughout the North--in all other respects law-abiding people--to secretly aid and even to publicly promote the escape of slaves fleeing from slavery. Nor could those who thus kept their conscience while they broke the law discriminate between the worthy and the unworthy in slave or master. There was no time in the quick trips between the stations of the Underground Railway to ascertain with precision whether the passenger was fleeing from just or unjust treatment, whether he had the character of a criminal escaping deserved punishment, or of a bondman aspiring to a condition of freedom; nor to judge and determine the individual merits and the legal rights of the owner. Behind lay Slavery--beyond blazed the North Star of Freedom.