never cease unless our government addressed england on the subject, on terms, as he put it, not to be mistaken. for harrison, all of this was a result, he warned of a heightened and stimulated -- of a group of negros and color -- uncle tom's cabin. that i am convinced he said that they would take any of their color out of an american vessel, be they free or otherwise. it is possible that the u.s. government could have followed harrison's suggestion and taken the dispute before the mixed commission jointly set about between the u.s. and britain to deal with such cases but in the

end, they chose not to do so. the anderson case is erie similar to another case involving a fugitive slave also known as john anderson who fled to canada at the end of the decade to avoid prostitution for murder. arrested and brought before the court of queen's bench, anderson was finally freed on a technicality following intense public pressure on the british government organized in london by the foreign anti-slaveried society. both cases also raised questions about the political reach of american fugitive slave laws and the many ways opponents found to resist the enforcement at home and abroad. as in so many other instances, it was anderson, handy and lois who took the decision to act, to get on board the ships in baltimore and charleston and doing so they opened up a heated debate with international repercussions over the nature and legitimacy of the fugitive

slave law. their actions and those of others were a direct political charge to slavery. anderson knew this, so did handy and lois. they had a profound sense of the meaning of freedom. when asked by the magistrate in savannah lamar, why he went on board the ship in baltimore, anderson repliereplied, i have kept in bondage and in hearing that this was a free country, i tried to get there. handy was equally clear, my object for going on board was for the purpose of achieving my liberty. they spoke for all those slaves such as henry banks who knew why they were leaving and where they were going. they were making themselves emancipated. thank you.

>> thank you very much, we will be taking questions, but i had to make an announcement first, cspan is recording us tonight, so they have asked, we will be running around a microphone to you when you raise your hand. it won't help us hear you at all in this audience, but it will enable the broadcast to hear you. so go ahead. >> people are escaping like slaves, there they go, on their way again. >> sir? >> yes. >> given the expenses that had to be gone through to retrieve a slave was it good money spent after bad? was it a principle that needed to be upheld to show the rest of

the slaves that the slave holders were serious about keeping their property? >> i think it's a built of both. keep in mind, that this is the most valuable property at the time in the united states. you know, by the outbreak of the civil war, it is in monetary terms, there's nothing comparable and all other sectors of economic activity combined, do not come close to the value of the slaves. so this is -- this is valuable property. and politically, it also raises questions and i think this is why i tried to tease out the banks case because it is clear that folks in front royal virginia are clear that they must get this man back, not only because of his value, but because of the standard that he

sets that others may emulate. so they go out of their way to find this man. >> do you know what kind of expenses were incurred trying to find him? >> no. they don't state this in the letters. but, look, they sent advertisements, they hire slave captures in one county in maryland, they hire the deputy marshall klein in philadelphia, ashby spends weeks in philadelphia trying to find. so, no, i don't know the exact amount of money, but it's a substantial amount of money. and time. >> given the premise that west

indian emancipation has been sold our taught in this country, what lessons do you think we should have learned prior to the civil war from that experience? >> oh, that's a whole book. yeah. not just in emancipation, but the haitian revolution, those things set a standard that folks in the slave system were concerned would have a direct bearing on how, on the system of slavery within the united states. and what folks did, is they simply attempted to deal with this problem either by passing more draconian laws that limited the mobility of slaves by trying to keep up, to show that

america, the home of democracy, was a much more -- was a much more open society than those monarchical societies like britain where workers were being exploited. the slaves were being looked after from birth to death, life was fun, life was good. and in all of this, the chink in the armor is the fact that the slaves keep running away from this very nice place. one of the telling points of the story about buckner's relationship with these masters is that it's clear that there was some level of affection, and i use that word advisedly. because, i mean in the case of massey, he is really trying to stop him being sold away. and i'm not quite clear what it is -- what buck's duties are as

a slave to the person that is hiding. but there's one very telling letter and i briefly mentioned, where banks offer ed to pay bac what he lost because he ran away. there are letters from massey to banks saying, look, could you please write a letter to the local authorities saying you wrote the pass yourself. because if you can show them that you wrote the pass yourself to escape them, local people would no longer come under suspicion that they colluded with you and plotted with you for your own escape. so the lines of communication are kept open in a very odd way. >> very stimulating.

i was -- the fact that there's been so much controversy about the constitution of the united states and whether the founders worked tirelessly until slavery had been abolished. that was the opinion of some people. but others, thomas jefferson and james madison and of course george mason all felt the constitution had quite aggressively protected slavery and protected it too much. so there was all this controversy that went on through the '30s and '40s about whether the constitution was pro slavery and the famous words of soldier truth, it has a little weasel in it. why the emotional impact of the compromise of 1850 which seems

to have set people off in the ways that you're describing. why is it that in fact it has so much of an impact? >> well, you asked me to give you tomorrow night's lecture tonight. but let me see if i could -- let me see if i could address it in very briefly. look, the 1850 fugitive slave law was seen as the last attempt to deal with this problem of compromise. or as some said, to keep the union together, to stop it drifting apart. and it is so draconian, i get my students to read it and ask them questions about it after. and they can't believe -- this is the most morally indefensible law that was ever passed in the united states, i am convinceded. in which every person was now

obligated to support the slave catchers that they didn't even know. they didn't have to be anti-slavery, under the law they were obligated to help in the recapture of people. it gave the commissioners who ruled in favor of a return of slaves $10 and if they -- if they set the slave free, they only got $5. now this is a capitalist movement as it's called here. there's an incentive for people to act in a way they would like to. there's all kinds of sections of that law. so what it did, no habeas corpus. no right of trial by jury. and in a society in which you can't tell the difference between a slave and a free black, the danger is that free blacks will be picked up and

taken back into slavery. now once people read this law, it became quite clear to them where it was going and folks declared -- in no uncertain terms, i'm in the process of trying to trace all of these meetings that took place that this will not happen. we will oppose this tooth and nail, and people made declarations that were politically very charged. if you came into this community and try to take a fugitive slave, we will kill you. and that is what happens at christiania, and what happens at christiania is -- they charged the people who were supposedly participants in christiania with treason, not with murder or with

stealing property, but tries them with treason. so the country is going nuts over this whole thing. there are some people who see this as a last gasp effort to keep this country together and they're saying well, if that's what it takes to keep the country together, then it should fall apart. so that's what makes the 1850 slave fugitive law, and the slaves they are the ones, by their actions, by taking the initiative to escape, they are widening the gaps between the two sections and forcing people to reconsider. >> but come back tomorrow. >> thank you for an excellent presentation. you invoke dubois and right on the spirit of your last

question, and i'm struck, we're talking about these purpose of actions that are being taken, these networks of communications that have been coordinated made me think of a case where -- that these networks are transcending neighborhoods and are creating a basis for something here that the slaves can then coordinate and then use during the civil war itself. and for me it -- what mchawn and mcpherson talk about and dubois actually, he called it the general strike, but in the social reconstruction of the negro, he's right, it was an insurrection. do you conclude that the actions of the slaves were constituted as a revolution in the united states? >> yeah, well, i mean, they are individual acts of resistance, the sum total of which the

demangds of the political society. it's not that it's not a revolt. people defended themselves when they could. there's be accounts of people being followed and fights and people die. so this is not the majority of the case. i don't think it's an act of revolt in the traditional sense, but they are acts of resistance and they are happening to frequently and under so many different guises, that i think collectively they politically challenged the system. and that's why i put so much emphasis on letter writing. people have this notion that there's some kind of weird communication system that is impossible to understand. it's not impossible to understand. the guys are writing letters. and folks, when did slaves get

to -- they're writing letters. and there's a purpose behind the letter. and this is why banks is such an interesting case. he writes three letters, and he's deliberately messing with the man. i think. >> one more question. >> can you hear me? >> yes. >> so you had spoken of canada and new york city and philadelphia and then mentioned california. in your research, where did you find the most popular destination for fugitive slaves, like if go and stay someplace permanently?

>> well, it's difficult to pinpoint, slaves who escape and leave family behind, sometimes tended to stay within shouting distance of where the family was. so that that's why when the maryland slave holder comes to christiania, he know where is they are, and the reason that there's that cluster of slaves in christiania is because there's clearly communication between themselves and family and friends left behind. but that makes them pretty vulnerable. so in some cases, they ccongreg larger cities, as banks's slave

owner finds out, it's like looking for a needle in a haystack. he could track them to certain places and yet he still can't find them. and it is after the passage of the fugitive slave law in 1850s, that people who had lived there a very long time, would -- there were communities that lost hundreds of their citizens in a space of weeks because people realized that there's danger, there's danger here. and what is clear from the evidence is that slave holders knew where their slaves were. i mean the crafts owner knew where they were in boston and he hung around and waited until the passage of the fugitive slave law in 1850 and within weeks of it being written into law by the president, he sends slave catchers to boston to get them.

because he knew that he had the mechanism, the legal means to get them, a mechanism that was much more draconian, was much more structured, was much more partial to his interest than the first fugitive slave law of 1793 that people have largely ignored. so folks are moving about and settling where they feel they are safe and when they are charged by the law in 1850, they would pick up camp and go somewhere else. many of them would go to canada. but if you're a slave in texas, forget canada, go to mexico. so wherever there's free territory, slaves went and tried to build a life for themselves away from slavery. and i think one of the points i hope that came out in the

lecture is that there's clearly a concept of what freedom means and they may not have written letters saying, you know, treatises about the nature of freedom and liberty, but you have to get at it by looking at their actions. [ applause ] >> thank you. tomorrow on washington journal, reuters economics correspondent pedro da cost that discusses the latest job numbers. and senior reporter joan goldwasser talks about the dodd-frank act. and stephanie vance, author of "the influence game." starting at 7:45 eastern live on cspan. >> the life of a sailor included scrubbing the deck in the morning, climbing aloft, whatever the duties assigned, gun drill practice, but by the end of the day, you're ready for some rest. but you don't get a full eight

hours of sleep. on a ship like the constitution, it's four hours on, four hours off. >> the life of an enlisted man aboard the u.s. constitution in the war of 1812. >> a cat of nine tails was always carried by a petty a officer in a bag. and the one thing a sailor never wanted to see was a captain getting ready for a flogging, you never want to see the cat tails coming out of the bag for a flogging. >> our series on key political figure who ran for president and lost. this is cspan 3, with politics and public affairs programming throughout the week and every weekend, 48 hours of people and events telling the

american story on american history tv. get our schedules and see past programs at our websites. and you can join in the conversation on social media sites. all this week, we have brought you american history tv in prime time. we wrap up this week's coverage now with a look at the life of robert smalls. he was a south carolina slave and ship's pilot for the confederacy. and in 1862, commandeered the css planter transport ship and surrendered it to a political ship. that action freed himself, his family and 12 other slaves. robert smalls went on to become a republican member of the u.s. house. this is two hours. >> good afternoon. my name is joe darby, it is my pleasure to welcome you to this wonderful celebration of an american hero. i get to do something tonight that pastors seldom get to do, i get to do the first spot, and

then i can sit down and shut up. let me present to you your moderator, your moderator is the great, great grandson of mr. smalls. he is an experienced executive with the strong and dynamic career, driving growth and innovation at congress assumer marketing companies. michael leverages world class experience and fellow leadership in brand strategy with the general manager and leadership skill to offer a unique blend of management capables. he has earned an degree at syracuse university, an mba at duke university, he will be the moderator for this discussion tonight. and it is my pleasure to present to you mr. michael moore.

>> good evening, it has been a wonderful day here in charleston. we started this morning at the charleston museum and there were a couple of very meaningful unveilings on the harbor, and we're capping the evening off with really rich and dynamic panel that i'm really excited to introduce to you. we're going to have -- i'm going to introduce the panel and then really, it's a dialogue. and i'm hoping that we can really generate some conversation among the group here. there is a microphone to the left here that i hope you can see, to your right and after the presentations, i'll kick things off with a question or two, but please feel free to come on up and you can sit in the pew and relax until it's your turn, but i'm really looking forward to a very nice conversation with everyone.

so our first presenter all the way over to the left, is dr. bernard edwards powers jr. he graduated from adoll fis college where he received a bachelor's degree in history. he earned the m arthe -- dr. po an excess of 30 years in higher education, at malcolm x college he served as a behavioral science -- northeastern illinois university where he served as associate professor of history and department chair. since 1992, he has been employed at the college of charleston in charleston, south carolina as professor of history, teaching courses in the united states and african-american history. he has been director of the masters program in history and is presently associate chairman of that department, process for

powers has frequently given speeches and presented numerous papers at professional conferences on different aspects of the african-american experience. he has served as a man script referee and has reviewed books for several journals, including the journal of american history, the journal of southern effort, the georgia historical quarterly. he's the author of black charlestonians, a history between 1882 to 1885. the book was selected by choice magazine as one of the outstanding academic books for 1995 and he also served as an associate editor of the university of south carolina. please welcome me in welcoming dr. powers. to his right, is dr. stephen r.

wise, dr. wise received his bachelor degree from -- he was drawn to the university of south carolina to study under the direction of the late thomas l. connelly, the noted civil war historian under whom wise earned his doctorate-degree. he's currently working with dr. lawrence roland on volumes 2 and 3 of the history of buford county. steven the director of the museum and the cultural resource manager. teach wise has been the featureded speaker on various south carolina educational television productions as well as on kunard -- history channel and the discovery channel as well as appeared in various south carolina educational television productions. he wrote the screen narrative for the guilded age productions

film american illiad. dr. wise has received a number of awards a. dr. wise will discuss -- emphasis will be on his service with the federal army and navy, his contributions to the war effort and his reactions within the southern white and black communities. please welcojoin me in welcomin wise. to his right is dr. w. marvin delaney, dr. delaney is the former research director at the college of charleston. currently he is an associate professor and chair of the history department of the university of texas at arlington. he teaches american history, african-american history, and the history of american public rights movement. he is a graduate of central

state university in ohio where he earned his bachelor of arts degree in history. he earned his masser of arts and dr. of philosophy degrees in american and african-american history in ohio state university in columbus, ohio. he has published several books including black police in america, essays on the american civil rights movement and born to serve. he is currently completing a book on african-americans in dallas, a social and political history for texas a&m university press. among his research interests are police history, criminal justice history and the history of the american civil rights movement. he also combines the traditional roll of a professor of public history dedicateded to the preserves of -- please join me in welcoming dr. delaney. and last but not