The Underground Railroad In Hudson County - Part Six

By Alexander Maclean

Edited by GET NJ, Copyright 2002

Free Black people were in danger. Many were kidnapped.

It was in 1837 that Texas offered annexation -- an offer that was declined because it would involve a war with Mexico. Calhoun subsequently prepared a treaty providing for this annexation in the interests of slave owners. This treaty was declined in the Senate, and thus became an issue in the presidential campaign of 1844. In that election Martin Van Buren and Henry Clay were both defeated. Polk became President after a campaign that still holds the record for political excitement. Polk's made possible the annexation of Texas, and the Mexican War. The slave owners thus gained a territory larger than France or Germany. The demand for slaves was stimulated to such a degree that free Black people were in danger. Many were kidnapped. It was proposed to enslave all free colored residents of the southern states. Arkansas did pass such a law.

The efforts of the early settlers of Kansas to make that a free State caused a repition of the outrages which had disgraced Missouri. The South tried by colonization and violence to drive the "free-soilers," as the anti-slavery people were called, out of the State. By 1850 an organized effort developed the border ruffians and produced a civil war that continued for years, gaving the State the name of "Bleeding Kansas."

By 1850 the Fugitive Slave law was passed by Congress. Under its provisions, slave hunting in the North became profitable.

Within the first year after the law became operative, there were more fugitive slaves seized in the North than had been captured in the preceding sixty years. This is very fully set forth in Horace Greely's Irrepressible Conflict and in the Court records.

Great brutatlity was used in this business, and many men and women with their families were taken from their homes in the North, even where they had lived here peaceably for twenty or thirty years, and raised their families here. They were returned to slavery. The individuals being sold to different owners and permanently separarated.

A number of sensational cases attracted wide attention; not a few victims committed suicide to escape the horrors of a return to slavery.

Part Seven

Hudson County, New Jersey is a place of many firsts - including genocide and slavery. Political corruption is a tradition here. First issue in a series by Anthony Olszewski Click HERE to find out more. Print Edition Now on Sale at Amazon Read Online at Google Book Search Advertiser and Distributor Inquiries Welcome

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