The ladies connected with this society, headed by Maria Weston Chapman, held an annual fair, and raised funds for the prosecution of the work of changing public sentiment, and otherwise aiding the anti-slavery movement. Lecturing agents were kept in the field the year round, or as far as their means would permit. A few clergymen had already taken ground against the blood-stained sin, and were singled out by both pulpit and press, as marks for their poisoned arrows. The ablest and most ultra of these, was Theodore Parker, the singularly gifted and truly eloquent preacher of the 28th Congregational Society of Boston. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, though younger and later in the cause, was equally true, and was amongst the first to invite anti-slavery lecturers to his pulpit. The writer of this, a negro, at his invitation occupied his desk at Newburyport, when it cost something to be an abolitionist. Brave men of other denominations, in different sections of the country, were fast taking their stand with the friends of the slave. The battle in Congress was raging hotter and hotter. The Florida war, the admission of Texas, and the war against Mexico, had given the slaveholders a bold front, and they wielded the political lash without the least mercy or discretion upon all who offended them. Greater protection for slave property in the free states was demanded by those who saw their human chattels escaping. The law of 1793, for the recapture of fugitive slaves, was now insufficient for the great change in public opinion, and another code was asked for by the South. On the 18th of September, 1850, the Fugitive Slave Bill was passed, and became the law of the land. This was justly condemned by good men of all countries, as the most atrocious enactment ever passed by any legislative body. The four hundred thousand free colored residents in the non slave-holding states, were liable at any time to be seized under this law and carried into servitude. Intense excitement was created in every section of the free states where any considerable number of colored persons resided. In Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio, where there were many fugitives and descendants of former slaves, the feeling rose to fever-heat. Every railroad leading toward Canada was thronged with blacks fleeing for safety. In one town in the State of New York, every member of a Methodist Church, eighty-two in number, including the pastor, fled to Canada. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill was a sad event to the colored citizens of this State. At that time there were eight thousand nine hundred and seventy-five persons of color in Massachusetts. In thirty-six hours after the passage of the bill was known here, five and thirty colored persons applied to a well-known philanthropist in this city for counsel. Before sixty hours passed by, more than forty had fled. The laws of Massachusetts could not be trusted to shelter her own children; they must flee to Canada.[52]