ABSTRACT
Fugitive escapes and slave narratives, Negro propaganda and co-operation, all did their part in the abolitionist and political abolitionist campaigns. They became more significant as they could be identified with the needs of white Northerners. Northern politicians were in conventional situations which limited their course of speech and action. As early as 1829, Benjamin Lundy had attempted, without success, to encourage fears that the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793, which permitted the return of Negroes to slavery, could be used to kidnap non-Negroes. The martyr of the fugitive-slave movement was the Reverend Charles T. Torrey, "father of the underground railroad," who crowned an eccentric career among abolitionists by joining his name, also at an early age, with Lovejoy's in their chronicles. In 1844, Calvin Fairbank, an Oberlin graduate, went to Kentucky to aid a fugitive's wife to escape. Fairbank was, however, seized in Indiana, where he had brought off his fugitive.
