[178] Letter of Martin I. Townsend, Troy, N.Y., Sept. 4, 1896. Mr. Townsend was counsel for the fugitive, Charles Nalle, in the Nalle or Troy Rescue case. See the little book entitled, _Harriet, the Moses of Her People_, 2d ed., p. 146; see also _History of the County of Albany, New York, from 1609-1886_, p. 725. [179] Conversation with Judge J. W. Finney, Detroit, Mich., July 27, 1897. The slight approach to organization manifest in some centres in the division of labor between station-keepers and special agents or conductors was caused by the large number of fugitives arriving at these points, and the extreme caution necessary. When, at length, indignation was aroused in the minds of Northern abolitionists by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, September 18, 1850, the determination to resist this measure displayed itself in certain localities in the formation of vigilance committees. Theodore Parker explains that it was in consequence of the enactment of this measure that "people held indignant meetings, and organized committees of vigilance whose duty was to prevent a fugitive from being arrested, if possible, or to furnish legal aid, and raise every obstacle to his rendition. The vigilance committees," he says, "were also the employees of the U. G. R. R. and effectively disposed of many a _casus belli_ by transferring the disputed chattel to Canada. Money, time, wariness, devotedness for months and years, that cannot be computed, and will never be recorded, except, perhaps, in connection with cases whose details had peculiar interest, was nobly rendered by the true anti-slavery men."[180] Such committees of vigilance were organized in Syracuse, New York, Boston, Springfield and some of the smaller towns of Massachusetts, in Philadelphia and other places. New York City, like Philadelphia, had a Vigilance Committee as early as 1838. About this association of the metropolis there is scarcely any information.[181] We must be content then to confine our attention to the committees called into existence by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. [180] Weiss, _Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker_, Vol. II, pp. 92, 93. [181] Frederick Douglass relates that when he escaped from Maryland to New York, in 1838, he was befriended by David Ruggles, the secretary of the New York Vigilance Committee; _Life of Frederick Douglass_, 1881, p. 205.