Concerning the efficiency of the new law there is a difference of opinion among the contemporary writers that commented upon it; but there could be no disagreement as to the distress into which it plunged some of the refugees long resident in the free states. In not a few instances these persons had married, acquired homes, and were rearing their families in peace and happiness. Under the Fugitive Slave Act some of these settlers were seized upon the affidavit of their former owners, and with the sanction of the federal authority were carried back into slavery. Among the many cases that might be cited the following will serve to illustrate the misfortunes ever ready to be precipitated upon fugitive settlers in the Northern states. In 1851 John Bolding, claimed as the property of a citizen of Columbia, South Carolina, was arrested in Poughkeepsie, New York, and taken back to the South. Bolding was a young man of good character, recently married, and the possessor of a small tailor shop in Poughkeepsie.[711] In August, 1853, George Washington McQuerry, of Cincinnati, was remanded to slavery in Kentucky. He had lived several years in Ohio, had married a free woman, and they had three children.[712] In September, 1853, a family of colored persons at Uniontown, Pennsylvania, were claimed as slaves by a Virginian. Their statement that they had been permitted by their master to visit friends in Fayette County did not prevent their immediate restoration to him.[713] In May, 1857, Addison White, a runaway from Kentucky, was found living near Mechanicsburg, Ohio, where he had been at work about six months earning means to send for his wife and children. Some of the abolitionists of the neighborhood prevented his reclamation.[714] In three of these cases at least the reënslavement of the refugees was prevented by an abolition sentiment locally strong enough to lead to the purchase of the slaves from their claimants; but it is noteworthy that public opinion in the neighborhoods where these runaways lived was unable to shield them from capture. [711] _The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims_, by Samuel May, Jr., 1861, p. 19. [712] _Ibid._, p. 31. See Appendix B, p. 374. [713] _Ibid._, p. 68 _et seq._ [714] See Appendix B, p. 375.