A father and son from Baltimore came to a town in Pennsylvania to recover a fugitive.

An alarm was sounded; men, mostly colored, rushed to the protection of the one whose liberty was threatened.

Two Quakers appeared on the scene and warned the slavehunters to desist and upon their refusal one slave-hunter was instantly killed and the other wounded.

The fugitive was conveyed to a place of safety, and to the murderers no punishment was meted out, though the general Government made strenuous efforts to discover and punish them.

In New York, though Gerrit Smith and a local clergyman with a few assistants rescued a fugitive from the officers of the law and sent him to Canada, openly proclaiming and justifying the act, no attempt was made to punish the offenders.
After a dozen years of intense and ever-increasing excitement, when other causes of friction between North and South had apparently been removed and good citizens in the two sections were rejoicing at the prospect of an era of peace and harmony, public attention was concentrated upon the one problem of conduct which would not admit of peaceable legal adjustment.