schools, were, by the compromises of the Constitution, admitted to be slaves, the property of a South Carolinian planter. The Boston father had no right to his own sons. The law, however, had long been considered a dead letter. The Christian mother, as she morning and evening bowed with her children in prayer, felt that they were safe from the slave-hunter, surrounded as they were by the churches, the schools, and the free institutions of Massachusetts. [724] Scrap-book of clippings, circulars, etc., presented to the Boston Public Library by Mrs. L. L. Parker. [725] C. E. Stevens, _Anthony Burns, A History_, 1856, p. 208. "The Fugitive Slave Law was enacted. It revived the hopes of the slave-owners. A young, healthy, energetic mother, with two fine boys, was a rich prize.... Good men began to say: 'We must enforce this law; it is one of the compromises of the Constitution.' Christian ministers began to preach: 'The voice of the law is the voice of God. There is no higher rule of duty.'... The poor woman was panic-stricken. Her friends gathered around her and trembled for her. Her husband was absent from home, a seaman on board one of our Liverpool packets. She was afraid to get out of doors lest some one from the South should see her and recognize her. One day, as she was going to the grocery for some provisions, her quick and anxious eye caught a glimpse of a man prowling around, whom she immediately recognized as from the vicinity of her old home of slavery. Almost fainting with terror, she hastened home, and, taking her two children by the hand, fled to the house of a friend. She and her trembling children were hid in the garret. In less than one hour after her escape, the officer with a writ came for her arrest. "... At midnight, her friends took her in a hack, and conveyed her, with her children, to the house of her pastor. A prayer-meeting had been appointed there, at that hour, in behalf of the suffering sister. A small group of stricken hearts were assembled.... Groanings and lamentations filled the room. No one could pray.... Other fugitives were there, trembling in view of a doom more dreadful to them than death. After an hour of weeping ... they took this Christian mother and her children in a hack, and conveyed them to one of the Cunard steamers, which fortunately was to sail for Halifax the next day.... Her brethren and sisters of the church raised a little money from their scanty means to pay her passage, and to save her for a few days from starving, after her first arrival in the cold land of strangers. Her husband soon returned to Boston, to find his home desolate, his wife and his children exiles in a foreign land. "I think that this narrative may be relied upon as accurate. I received the facts from the lips of one, a member of the church, who was present at that midnight 'weeping-meeting,' before the Lord. Such is slavery in Boston, in the year 1852. Has the North nothing to do with slavery?"[726]