but like many parts of the constitution, all little they. it doesn't say who has to return them. the federal government, the state, what procedures, is there a trial or a judge, what happens? it doesn't say that. a fugitive slave law was passed in 1793 a national one but that was weak and they basically

put the onus on the owner. if the owner goes up to north and crabbs the fugitive he can take them back. that wasn't that easy to do although there were owners and agencies in this health, slave hunters trying to grab fugitives in the north but were people who resisted them. in 1850 the federal government passes a new law the fugitive slave act which makes it a federal responsibility. the federal government will now send marshals into northern states to grab fugitives. they set up a whole new position office, the federal commissioner who will hear these cases and send them back. it even says the army can be used if there's a danger of a right or something. they will send in the army. this is a strict law very draconian, strict punishments to people who help fugitive slaves or even people who refused to help the government and capturing them. it led to a lot of opposition in the north on the basis, it's

ironic, a states' rights. the south demanding federal action to overturn local procedures, local laws in the north. it's probably the most vigorous expansion of federal power over the states in the whole period before the civil war. so yes, this is part of the run up to the civil war the sexual controversy and the fugitive slave issue becomes part of the. the point of order to make is obvious in the way but we might forget it is not without slaves running away, none of this would've happened. it's the initiative of slave resistance in the first place that triggers their sexual conflict over fugitive slaves. even the people did not run away thinking i'm going to become an issue in a national political debate, their actions did help to force a sexual conflict onto the agenda of national politics. >> host: it's worth noting as

well that the fugitive slave act of 1850 was probably the most un-american of laws because it didn't give a person who is being accused of having been a fugitive any right to testify in court, and it actually paid the commissioner more money to release the person to the whidbey owner or the suggested order them to release the person. it's a very un-american in that regard. >> guest: you are absolutely right. yes, the fugitive could not testify on his own behalf. basically it was almost it was just a property operation. the owner would turn up with the deed or description and say here's proof that i own this guy ask it, here's proof i own him. i purchased them. here's the deed. that's it. it was like finding a piece of furniture. it was a property operation, not something about a human being.

so the property does not the right to testify in that case. no trial by jury, no local authorities involved. and that you say this was many people who were not abolitionists at all found this an outrageous violation of civil liberties in the united states and, therefore, that's what it heightened tension. far outside of the abolitionist movement many northerners thought this was an unjust judicial procedure. >> host: and, of course the war comes and president lincoln makes it very clear that the south has nothing to fear in terms of him attacking their domestic institutions, including slavery. so in his first inaugural address he's very clear that is going to enforce all of the laws, including the fugitive slave act. and so he had been very clear though before he actually was sworn in that he would not

compromise on the expansion of slavery into the territory. but in terms of the fugitive slave act, he was willing to actually ensure that that i was enforced, as long as people who were fully free were not cut up into. we could never be certain. >> guest: that is exactly right. lincoln as you on it was not an abolitionist lincoln never claimed to be an abolitionist. before the war lincoln had said as you say he was strongly opposed to the western expansion of slavery but he never called for violation of the future slave law. lincoln was a lawyer, a man who believed in the rule of law. inand a famous letter in 1855 to his friend joshua speed, slave owning kentucky lincoln said about fugitives, he said i hate to see them hunted down but i bite my lip and keep silent. why did he keep silent? because this is in the

constitution, ma federal law. unlike the abolitionists he said i don't believe in a higher law. i don't believe that you can abide by the moral law rather than the actual law on the books. and in the secession crisis he says i don't care what we do about fugitives list. i'm willing to give them concessions on that, not on the expansion of slavery. slavery. although he's set out like the fugitive slave law to be amended so that if a person could not be caught up. given what the fugitive slave law operate a free people could be grabbed, proper commissioner summonses that i used to be my slave and he is sent back. he can't even testify in his own behalf. so they did in force the fugitive slave law at the beginning of the war. slaves from the very beginning run away to the union army in maryland, let's say and the army since the back to their owners early on. but pretty quickly that begins to fall apart. by the end of 1861, the army is

no longer in most cases sending fugitives back and lincoln himself is saying if they get to our lines they are free. i'm not going to turn them back into slavery. this is a sign of the war itself very quickly begins to destabilize the institution of slavery post make you introduced very courageous and sometimes quite cultural the struggle figures such as sidney howard gay, who is the editor of the national anti-slavery standard william stills, who is a freeborn black man who was a key underground railroad agent for people who were coming into philadelphia. and who himself actually kept a record of some of the people who arrived, really interesting details of their lives. then there was the jays william j. and john jay the second who were very much involved in working with fugitives sometimes

actually defending them all representative. legally. i was most intrigued however by luis napoleon. can you tell us a little bit about that particular figure and how instrumental he was to fugitives arrive in new york? >> guest: he was one of the most important figures and unknown. i studied the 19th century. i had heard of william jay, john jay, i knew about william still. when i start looking through this document the record of fugitives, gay will say napoleon took into the station, or isa napoleon, who was this napoleon? well, eventually turns out louis napoleon, a black man born in new york in 1800 which meant a lot have been passed in 1799 for gradual emancipation, sea goose board, not a slave exactly what he deserved and friendship of like 21 years to his owner until he became fully free and to do

that so in the 1820s he finally becomes free. but basically by the 1840s napoleon is working in the office of sidney howard gay what they call the anti-slavery office with this newspaper is published by this main job is to go in the fugitive slave. he scours the docs, after looking for those hidden on both the win william steele since people by train from philadelphia to new york louis napoleon goes and meets them at the train depot and brings them to the office and in their sent upstate new york and canada. the interesting thing and louis napoleon goes to court to get writs of habeas corpus for people who are brought, slaves were brought to the states try to get them free. what's interesting is he is illiterate. there are papers of his marked with an expertise signs his name with an x. and yet he was an activist, very courageous and

even has come he takes part in legal cases. so he's a remarkable guy and i had known nothing about them until i discovered him in again manuscript. you mentioned john jay the second pick in one case napoleon versus limit where napoleon had gotten this writ of habeas corpus to free some slaves brought into the state by a virginian named lemon the lawyer for the virginian says in the case is this louis napoleon who brought this case the emperor of france? and john jay he was representing these slaves says no no. , he's a much better man. so napoleon was a very upstanding and courageous man. >> host: and he's just one of many african-americans who are so intimately involved in helping these fugitives. we know so much about harry tubman who made several trips south to free relatives and people she didn't even know --

harriet tubman. we don't know about these other people but we don't know about people until now i think who are escaping either individually or in groups. can you tell us a little bit about how their expenses showed the diversity of why people left, what they encountered along the way and what they actually received in terms of assistance once they arrived in new york? i'm thinking of people like when the taxi, peter matthews, william jordan, those folks whose names we have never heard before that have really interesting stories. >> guest: these names and the record of fugitives, slaves who came through new york and gay wrote down their expenses and of course, they have been lost to history up to this point. unlike harriet dublin who is pretty well known of course. the thing that struck me the most in reading through this document is the incredible

variety of ways in which people escape from reason for their escaping, how they escaped. some escaped on foot which is sort of the traditional idea they hit during the day and went through the woods at night. but actually most didn't escape that way. many escaped on boats. they were ship captains in virginia who are willing to hide some fugitives on your boat heading north for the. the slaves had to pay the money to do that. some of them escaped country. frederick douglass of course did that in 1838. if you get the free papers of a free black person you can get on a train and go to the north and that was a lot easier than doing it through the woods. some of them stole the appropriate a horse, horse drawn carriages of the owners and fled from maryland to pennsylvania. many of them escaped in groups. that was another thing that surprised me groups of

relatives. sometimes women with small children even, very difficult to do that, of course and the help of all sorts of people. below the mason-dixon line they were generally help black people, either slaves or free, who appointed on the web or give them some food or hide them along the way. they didn't go from station to station the way we sometimes think. there were not be stationed in the south really except for one or two. they just relied on the help of black people they encountered until they reached maybe wilmington, delaware, which is just below the mason-dixon line and weather was thomas garret at a recognized kind of the group in wilmington helping fugitives. once they got over the border into pennsylvania they encountered in the quaker farmers in southern pennsylvania who are willing to help, and then they're sent to philadelphia where william still as you said when what they called the vigilance committee. he would quickly put on a train trip up to new york and notify gay by

telegram, two are coming, or something like that. napoleon would go and meet them at the depot. and engage quickly whenever you couldn't stay in philadelphia. you could not stay in here. you were liable to be captured at any moment. the point was to get moving on to upstate new york which was a lot safer. after 1850 really just to get to canada because of the fugitive slave law. you are not safe anywhere in the united states. it's a commentary on our history that these are people, we often think of people immigrating to the united states to seek freedom but here were people who had to flee the united states for another country to enjoy liberty. >> host: indeed. you are right not just fugitives from slavery either but free black people who would be the united states and going to canada because they don't feel safe anymore. in the north, certainly they don't feel safe if there in the south and they don't even feel safe if there in places like philadelphia and new york

either. >> guest: well, you're right. once the fugitive slave law is best, first of all it retroactive so you could have escaped 30 years before raised a family, lived a perfectly law-abiding life in new york and you're still now liable to be grabbed and sent back to slavery. moreover, because of the way the law operator which we discussed it was hard to prove you were not a slave of the guy who claimed you were his slave you know. so yes in the 1850s, the 1850s is the only decade i believe with the black population of new york city actually declined several thousand, black people free or fugitive left for canada. some of them went to england to avoid the danger posed by the fugitive slave law. so it affected the whole black community, not just the fugitive slave. >> host: you mentioned the fact that women are sometimes fleeting as well.

often with children in tow and it's a store that we don't here very much about. it is very difficult for them to do that, but women in the north are very much involved in helping these fugitives when they arrived in these cities as well. can you tell us about what they are doing? >> guest: black and white women, as i said, in southern pennsylvania you had these quaker families including women, one of them i wrote about their colorful interesting person grace anna lewis, she wrote in a memoir how quaker part she wrote about how she and other women had a sewing support it just made clothing for fugitives because fugitives were wearing rags basically when they escaped or slave clothing come and they looked like slate. she submitted want them to look like they were slaves as we're sending them off so we made this clothing for them. in new york and other cities,

women held these anti-slavery bazaars or fares where they sold things and sometimes the money would go to help fugitive slaves like bake sales you would almost say to help fugitive. in new york a committee of black women in new york city in 1850s was holding these fares to raise money to help the fugitives. so it was both an interracial and male and female working to assist fugitive slaves in the northern states. >> host: i'm always struck by the fact that abolitionists are anti-slavery, many of them are also anti-black. how do you explain this? >> guest: you know racism as you know of course was deeply embedded in northern as well as southern society in the 19th century, and this is something that i often find it difficult to explain our students it's

difficult to understand the how can you be anti-slavery and also races at the same time? first of all there are plenty of reasons to oppose slavery had nothing to do with race. you can think it's an economic drag on the country. you can think that unit and it gives the south too much political power and they block laws and northerners water. you can take as many people did that you don't want slavery going into the western territories because you don't like black people. people who want to settle in kansas or places like that, they don't want blacks around and they don't want slaves or free blacks around for the oppose the expansion of slavery on the ground. there's a whole range of reasons why people are critical of slavery and even the same person can be contradictory. and abolitionist no question about it he would not hire black people to work in his business.

he had a big mercantile firm. he would not have a block clerks working there and he said the reason is white people are not going to come into shock if they see black people working there so i'm not hiring any blacks. but on the other hand he had blacks in his home in brooklyn heights, fugitive slaves and he gave them a lot of money to the antislavery movement. even in his own life you can see these contradictions which only proves that people in history are complicated. >> host: absolutely. and despite this anti-black sentiment throughout the north you have some of these states passing personal liberty laws. what was the reaction of southerners to this? >> guest: personal liberty laws which many northern states passed tried to set up procedures either to just make it more fair so they went okay, i choose to fugitive have to have a trial by jury or they actually try to impede the rendition of fugitives by saying

no public official can help no sheriff can arrest the fugitive the public just jails cannot be used to house the fugitive. southerners were very put off alarmed by these laws because they seem to be a direct violation of the constitutional obligation of the north to return fugitive slaves. so they would to if they're going to pass laws taking away that constitutional right that we have, how can we trust that they will not violate the constitutional rights that slave owners have? so these laws became another part of the sexual conflict and youto get this ironic situation where northern states are calling for nullification of the federal fugitive slave law were as southerners calhoun we associate with the doctrine of nullification. >> host: absolutely. when the war is over and are no more fugitives to assist, the agents of the underground railroad and members of the

vigilance committee we channel their efforts so to speak and they try to ensure equality for the newly emancipated. given the role why especially given the role of african-americans, the role that advocate americans had played in the union why was this a difficult for these people to convince white americans that african-americans were entitled to more than just freedom that they were entitled to equality as well? >> guest: well you know, lydia berea child, the great abolitionist and the first woman to edit a political newspaper, she was the editor of the anti-slavery standard before sending howard gay took over the post, she said right at the end of the civil war something to the effect that she said the problem is that slavery was abolished because of a miserable

military necessity, not a moral we awaken. the abolitionist movement that called on people to in south to have this moral transformation to understand, admit that slavery was a sin and a crime and then wants to acknowledge that they would abolish slavery but that's not how slavery got abolished. slavery was abolished as a war measure the that's what the emancipation proclamation was. many people came to support the abolition of slavery because they felt it was necessary to defeat the south but that, of course, doesn't carry with it a commitment to quality in now as you know, in the immediate aftermath of the civil war as the southern states passed measure strength almost put blacks i can to slavery, the so-called black coats and things like that many northerners were aroused by that an outraged even if they weren't egalitarians. they said these guys are trying to undo the civil war we

abolished slavery, folks, in these rebels won't accept the. so for a time they supported measures to protect the basic rights of the former slaves. the civil rights act of 1866 the 14th amendment eventually giving blacks the right to vote in the south which launches radical reconstruction. those have pretty widespread support in the north for complicated reasons, but then that wayne's pick by the 1870s racism is reasserting itself into commitment to black equality not just in the south of course but in the north is withering, and that is the story eventually of ending up reconstruction. >> host: and why does that happen? i mean certainly the racism was always there, but why by this time does the north just throw up its hands and say, enough already, we are not going to do anything else to help these people. >> guest: well, as you know i wrote a six page book about this

and i saw to summarize it but you know, i think racism as you know has a history. it's not constant all the time. i think racism did wane a bit at the end of the civil war is because the service of black soldiers, 200,000 black soldiers have fought and some died to save the nation and they think that convinced many northerners that they deserve basic citizenship rights. but by the 1870s people want normalcy. they don't want a constant crisis. after a workers a desire to return back to normal. by the 1870s also the country enters a severe economic depression which sort of shifts public sentiment in the north away from southern issues to economic questions of unemployment and that sort of thing. so i think that commitment wanes. it's a complicated story. racism has a lot to do with obviously. so does the rise of social darwinism as among intellectuals

and others the idea that really you can't do much to change the hierarchy of the world. people at the top are the fittest, the survival of the fittest, so to take those at the bottom, blocks, and try to uplift them is sort of against nature. it's like trying to save a species which is going to be doomed because of the evolutionary conflict or something like that. so all these become grounds for just people saying well, we tried, we did our best black people now have right. it's up to then the negative to black people themselves to forge their way into society. so the desire to intervene, to help them come is pretty much gone by the end of the 1870s. >> host: and yes, you are very familiar with the post-emancipation era and reconstruction. so i feel accountable asking you this question even though this

is not really a focus of your book. given all that could have been done in the post-emancipation era and was not done or into the failing come even though there were efforts, what do you see as the greatest their of the post-emancipation era? and i know that as historians we are not supposed to be involved in what if but it's always fun to do that anyway, so let's do that. what is the greatest failure? >> guest: you know to me the greatest failure is a simple thing, which is a commitment to enforcing the law. the south and african-americans were going to have plenty of problems after the war. there was no way you're going to have utopia right away after the end of slavery. the south was devastated. icon economy, the price of

cotton was falling throughout this period. african-americans came out of slavery with nothing in terms of money, physical position. do with those who think welcome if it disturbed land, 40 acres and a mule and you would be given an economic foundation to the freedom of these 4 million people have a quick. it's better to have landed them not to have land if you're in an agricultural society but that would've been a panacea either. white farmers were in dire straits who owned their own land. to me the failure which could've been avoided i think it's possible to imagine scenarios where this didn't happen is simply the enforcement of the law, the federal government saying look we have passed these laws we change the constitution to create equality before the law for all people regardless of race and now we are going to enforce this. they enforcing for a while but then the commitment wanes and it took almost another 100 years

until we call the second reconstruction of the 1960s when, again, the federal government finally stepped in to you had a mass movement forcing them to do it of course, but finally the federal, stepped in to enforce the law the courts the army, the national guard. and once that happens then things changed. in people understand they have to abide by what the law is. the white people in the south didn't understand that by the 1870s. >> host: and so no reach this edition of land but it wouldn't have made much difference if land -- >> guest: it would have been -- i don't think it was the full solution, that's all the it's much better to have land but the plight of the small farmer was very desperate throughout the south and throughout the world in the last quarter of the 19th century. many whites owned land lost their land in the next 20 years that's why you have the populist

movement in the 1890s. so land in and of itself was not enough. >> host: in my own research i found in my research is primary in virginia, and that's very different from mississippi or alabama. >> guest: virginia is a very different situation. i'm talking about the cotton the south. >> host: in other areas it was a possibility that people would have at least been economically independent it they may have been very poor but it wouldn't have had to rely on the very people who had enslaved them. >> guest: right. as you know in virginia a considerable number of after the americans had a quite land by 1900. but they still lost the right to vote poster and a loss of the land, too over time. >> guest: it eventually but lost the land, right. >> host: exactly. in terms of your review of the sydney howard gay records of the fugitives who arriving in new york, what most surprised you about that collection

transferred understand ? >> guest: was most surprising was incredible resourcefulness of people, people who plan for years how they're going to escape, or on the event people who just sees an opportunity that happened to come upon them, okay, there's a boat i've heard the captain told today, i'm going right now. but it's this variety. we're talking mostly about people from the upper south. you couldn't get from alabama up to north. that's too far. so most of these people are from maryland, district of columbia or virginia. where slavery is a little different from the deep south, although it's still slavery obviously, and it's just a variety of experiences. no two escapes are the same no two personal experiences are the same period one thing that is constant in here is the desire for freedom. wingate asked people why he escaped, some gave specific

reasons, my master treated me so brutally, beaten, et cetera. often they said my wife was just sold, or i was afraid i was going to be so. i heard my master was losing money and has to sell his sleeve. many of them just that i was tired of being a slave. i wanted to be free, you know and so it's this kaleidoscope of experiences and impressions that really struck me. by the way let me say the record of fugitives is now online. we have digitalized at columbia university with a transcript a anyone who wants to pour through it and to recommend to anyone interested in art history, just go out you can google gave record of features and you'll find the link to it. it's been put there by the columbia university library system and you can just read through it but it's fascinating stuff. >> host: excellent. i know you're for money with william steele collection. william steele who was in

philadelphia and record information of fugitives arriving there as well. how do the two records compared or do they at all. it's right, by the way williams stuff is also online because of the historical society. still kept these records not all of them have survived i think but very similar today although still was not a journalist like today. in still you don't get to riches stories that day recorded because as they say is a journalist and his writing as if, he's writing newspaper articles here but what's important is you can use the two together to link up these stories. so over half of the people who passed through new york city came from and were sent by william steele from philadelphia. still talks about their experiences. gay talks about their expensive but still gives more information about what happened, how they got out of the south because

he's closer to the self. gay gives more information about how they got a new in what he sent them from new york. and also you can use them to see if these stories are consistent. worthiestwere these slaves just making everything up? i don't know, but no, the stories are consistent to what they told still and gay were considered to you can use that information to track down who with her owners. when i first started looking at this, is this true? okay, here's a guy who said i escape from colonel hollingsworth plantation in maryland and he owned 50 flights. all right, lets go to the senses and find colonel hollingsworth. there he is in exactly the right county with this 50 slaves. so you begin to find that the stories are quite reliable when you can check them against other kinds of sources from the time. also you can then with steals information and information in gay you can go back to the "baltimore sun" and find fugitive slave as where the

owner will put in an ad in the newspaper, sort of escaped, reward them ran away from reward $100 for a person who gave him. that's a funny phrase. if anyone can get him and bring him back, $100. that's a pretty good illustration of where they came from who owns them and often of physical descriptions. so you put all this evidence to get educated pretty comprehensive picture post back to give any sense of how successful these people were who did escape to the north? other than someone like frederick douglass of course. >> guest: you know the problem is most of them just disappear from the historical record. some of them pop up in the canadian census but in 1861 there was a census in canada and a number of these fugitives are living there. they are recorded in ontario opposite buffalo near toronto. they were these black settlements of both free and slave fugitives. so we know for some of them what

they were doing, their job whether they were married, actually. most of them disappeared. we cannot track them down to some of the most famous once again, henry "box" brown who escaped by having it shipped in a crate to philadelphia fed up to new york, eventually went to england to we know frederick douglass. some of them like harriet jacobs who pops up in these records, taubman, but most of them we really know very, very little about what happened to them after they managed to get to freedom post back its extraordinary how willing people were to go to great lengths for freedom. they are walking great distances, men and women. >> guest: some of them did post the if i have to walk more than a few blocks i'm getting into my car to do it but these people are walking sometimes 200 miles. >> guest: 200 miles yes. >> host: so it's just extraordinary. these are extraordinary stories

that you have in this volume. what would you like the reader to take from this? >> guest: well thank you by the way. this book is a little different i've written a lot of books as you said but this was different because i did want to really humanize it not that the others are -- but with these individual stories of unknown people which can be gleaned from the documents that we put together and i just wanted people to get a sense of what it was like to escape and how you wind and some of the dangers they felt, being chased by dogs and going through freezing weather and walking hundreds of miles are being betrayed by someone. some were arrested and escaped from jail and continued on their way. so i think it's just these stories of slaves of people, ordinary people we know very very little about other than how the escape and why the escaped. by also would like people to

take away admiration for the people working on the underground railroad. we have gone through a fairly tense period of race relations in this country in the last few months because of some famous events that have taken place in ferguson and in staten island, new york and this is an example of black and white people working together. it's an interracial movement of people working together for a just cause, and that is a think part of our history. we can look back on with great pride. >> host: there is a series that is airing this week titled book of negroes and of course it's about those african-americans who evacuated new york with the british at the end of the american revolution. so they are talking about an earlier fugitive population. have had opportunity to see any of the episodes transferred you

know, i don't watch tv very much. i shouldn't say this because we are on tv but i do want to see the. i have heard about it and they hope it will be repeated or maybe i can just stream it online. people have told me about it. of course, the book of negroes is new york city. doing the revolution new york was occupied by the british. the british offered freedom to any slave of a patriot not of a loyalist but of a patriot who got to their lines and several thousand slaves got to nuke city in order to gain their freedom and when the war was over, george washington came up to new york to negotiate the british surrender and evacuation of new york. and he said, we would like also slaves but and general clinton the british commander said no unfortunately i can't give you these slaves back because it would be dishonorable. we have promised these people their freedom but it would