[rob777]

"The South wanted its Fugitive Slave Act, whereby Southern militias had every right to invade the North whenever and wherever they wanted to hunt down refugee slaves"


Here in Vermont a Judge had an interesting reply to slave owners trying to use the Fugitive Slave Law to demand the return of a slave that had escaped to Vermont via the underground railroad. His reply was that the slave owner had not provided adequate proof of ownership. The slave owner wanted to know what would constitute adequate proof. The Judge's reply was that he needed "a bill of sale from God Almighty". The slave was not returned. Vermonters played a key role in the underground railroad and were proud of the fact.

[muawiyah]

One of my Great Grandfather's had a farm with a large orchard dating back to Civil War Days.

On a walk with a Great Aunt one day she told me about the "slave catchers" buried there. She said they'd put a little pile of rocks on top the grave so's to now disturb it in later farmwork.

THERE WERE A LOT OF LITTLE PILES OF ROCKS IN THAT ORCHARD.

Years later we found out about an ancestor arrested, tried and convicted for aiding slaves to escape through that region. I later turned up the route of the "Dipping Gourd", a paleo-Indian structure covering most of Indiana, and paralleling an internal "small dipper" centered on the Muncie/Anderson region.

The old family farm was definitely part of the Underground Railroad and given its relative distance from the various bends on the Ohio River, it was probably pretty busy ~ for both runaway slaves and the slave catchers following them.

I've come to think of it as one of the places the Civil War started.