On the evening of the 22nd a mass meeting was held at the city hall, attended by a great concourse of angry citizens, who, amid tumultuous applause, resolved to defy "death, the dungeon and the grave" in resisting the hated law. Douglas appeared on the platform and announced that on the following evening he would address the people in defense of the Fugitive Slave Law and the entire Compromise. The announcement was received with a storm of hisses and groans. The next night an enormous multitude gathered to hear him. The audience was not only sullen but bitterly hostile. After a contemptuous reference to the resolutions and a brief vindication of himself against their insinuations, he plunged into the defense of the law. He insisted that the provision for the return of fugitive slaves contained in the recent act was analogous to the general provision of law for the return of fugitives from justice, and, while abuses of the process might occur and wrong occasionally inflicted, that was one of the inherent infirmities of human law, and the same objection could be urged with equal force to all extradition statutes. While free blacks might be seized in the North and carried South on the false charge of being fugitives from service, innocent white men might also be seized in Chicago and carried to California on the false charge of being fugitives from justice. He reminded them that the law of 1850 was substantially a reenactment of that of 1793, passed by the Revolutionary Fathers, the founders of the Constitution, and approved by President Washington. He did not argue, but assumed the justice of the old law; nor did he allude to the increased ardor of pursuit of fleeing slaves since their increase in value. He rested his case on the close resemblance of the letter of the new law to that of the old. He told them that the duty of returning fugitive slaves was created not by THIS law, but by the Constitution, and that the real question was not as to the existence of the duty, but which law performed it most justly and efficiently. A listener asked him whether the Constitution was not in violation of the will of God. He warned them of the danger of that objection, arising from the difficulty of authentically ascertaining the will of God. It was not practicable to allow each citizen to determine it for himself. Hence, certain fundamental principles had been established as a Constitution, which must be assumed to be in harmony with it and from which no appeal lay. The Constitution provided for the return of fugitive slaves. The sacred duty of citizenship bound them to support it. Appeals to a higher law were impracticable and a mere evasion of duty.