It is not to be supposed, of course, that the business of slave-hunting was carried on mainly by the persons here described in such uncomplimentary terms. Persons of this type contented themselves generally, no doubt, with acting as spies and informers, and rarely engaged in the excitement of a slave-hunt except as the aids of Southern planters or their agents. If it is true that there was a sentiment averse to slavery prevailing through many years in the North, it is also true that the residents of the free states for the most part conceded the right of Southerners to pursue and recover their fugitives without hindrance from their Northern neighbors. The free states thus became what the abolitionists called the "hunting-ground" of the South, and as early as 1830 or 1835 the pursuit of slaves began to attract wide attention. During the years following many localities, especially in the middle states, were visited from time to time by parties on the trail of the fleeing bondman, or seeking out the secluded home of some self-freed slave; and after the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 Southerners became more energetic than before in pushing the search for their escaped chattels. It has been recorded that "more than two hundred arrests of persons claimed as fugitives were made from the time of the passage of the Bill to the middle of 1856. About a dozen of these were free persons, who succeeded in establishing the claim that they never had been slaves; other persons, equally free, were carried off. Half a dozen rescues were made, and the rest of these cases were delivered to their owners. These arrests took place more frequently in Pennsylvania than in any other Northern state. Many fugitives were caught and carried back, of whom we have no accounts, save that they were seen on the deck of some river steamboat, in the custody of their owners, without even passing through the formality of appearing before a commissioner. About two-thirds of the persons arrested as above had trials. When the arrests to the number of two hundred, at least, can be traced, and their dates fixed, during six years, we may suppose that the Bill was not, as some politicians averred, practically of little consequence."[710] [710] Weiss, _Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker_, Vol. II, p. 93.