Harriet Beecher Stowe gained the intimate knowledge of the methods of the friends of the slave she displays in _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ through her association with some of the most zealous abolitionists of southern Ohio. Her own house on Walnut Hills, Cincinnati, was a refuge whence persons whose types are portrayed in George and Eliza, the boy Jim and his mother, were guided by her husband and brother a portion of the way towards Canada.[320] Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the essayist and author, while stationed as the pastor of a free church in Worcester, Massachusetts, from 1852 to 1858, often had fugitives directed to his care. In a recent letter he writes of having received on one occasion a "consignment of a young white slave woman with two white children" from the Rev. Samuel J. May, who had put her "into the hands, for escort, of one of the most pro-slavery men in Worcester." The pro-slavery man, of course, did not have a suspicion that he was acting as conductor on the Underground Railroad.[321] [320] See Chapter X, pp. [321] Letter of T. W. Higginson, Dublin, N.H., July 24, 1896. [Illustration: FREDERICK DOUGLASS.] Joshua R. Giddings, for twenty years in Congress an ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery, kept a particular chamber in his house at Jefferson, Ohio, for the use of refugees.[322] Sometimes when passing through Alliance, Ohio, Mr. Giddings found opportunity to call upon his friend, I. Newton Peirce, to whom he contributed money for the transportation of runaway slaves by rail from that point to Cleveland.[323] What his views were of the irritating law of 1850, he declared on the floor of the House of Representatives, February 11, 1852, in the following words: "... Let me say to Southern men; It is your privilege to catch your own slaves, if any one catches them.... When you ask us to pay the expenses of arresting your slaves, or to give the President authority to appoint officers to do that dirty work, give them power to compel our people to give chase to the panting bondman, you overstep the bounds of the Constitution, and there we meet you, and there we stand and there we shall remain. We shall protest against such indignity; we shall proclaim our abhorrence of such a law. Nor can you seal or silence our voices."[324] [322] Conversation with J. Addison Giddings, Jefferson, O., Aug. 9, 1892. [323] Letter of I. Newton Peirce, Folcroft, Sharon Hill P.O., Pa., Feb. 1, 1893. [324] George W. Julian, _The Life of Joshua R. Giddings_, 1892, p. 289.