Such evidence, which is local in its nature, should be considered in conjunction with the general estimates of those persons that expressed opinions after wide observation in regard to the whole number of fugitive settlers in the North. The most indefinite of these contemporary opinions is that of the veteran underground helper, Samuel J. May, who states that "hundreds ventured to remain this side of the Lakes."[700] Other judges attempt to put their estimates into figures; thus, Henry Wilson thinks that by 1850 twenty thousand had found homes in the free states;[701] Mr. Franklin B. Sanborn, admitting the inherent difficulty of the calculation, places the number at from twenty-five thousand to fifty thousand;[702] and the Canadian refugee, Josiah Henson, wrote in 1852: "It is estimated that the number of fugitive slaves in the various free states ... amounts to 50,000."[703] [700] _Some Recollections of our Anti-Slavery Conflict_, p. 297. [701] _Rise and Fall of the Slave Power_, Vol. II, p. 304; see also E. B. Andrews' _History of the United States_, Vol. II, p. 36. [702] Conversation with Mr. Sanborn, Cambridge, Mass., March, 1897. [703] _The Life of Josiah Henson, formerly a Slave, as narrated by Himself_, p. 97. Fugitives that thus dwelt in the Northern states for a longer or shorter period did so at their own risk, and in general against the advice of their helpers. Their reliance for safety was altogether upon their own wariness and the public sentiment of the communities where they lived, and until slavery perished in the Civil War they were subjected to the fear of surprise and seizure. The Southern people apparently regarded their right to recover their escaped slaves as unquestionable as their right to reclaim their strayed cattle, and they were determined to have the former as freely and fully recognized in the North as the latter;[704] and it might be added that there were not a few people in the North quite willing to admit the slaveholder's right freely to reclaim his human property, and to aid him in doing so. What the sentiment was that prevailed in the North during the twenties and thirties of the present century is evidenced in certain laws enacted by the legislatures of some of the states in line with the Federal Slave Law of 1793. Thus, in an act passed by the assembly of Pennsylvania, March 25, 1826, provision was made for the issuance by courts of record of the commonwealth of certificates or warrants of removal for negroes or mulattoes, claimed to be fugitives from labor;[705] and in a law enacted by the legislature of Ohio, February 26, 1839, it was provided that any justice of the peace, judge of a court of record, or mayor should authorize the arrest of a person claimed as a fugitive slave on the affidavit of the claimant or his agent, and that the judge of a court of record before whom the fugitive was brought should grant a certificate of removal upon the presentation of satisfactory