A compromise, however, was effected, and the seceding members took their seats on the following day.  Feeling, however, ran very high.  Some people returned fugitive slaves to their owners, while others established what was then known as the underground railway.  This was a combination between Abolitionists in various parts, and involved the feeding and housing of slaves, who were passed on from house to house and helped on their road to Canada.  Much excitement was caused in 1841 by the ship “Creole,” which sailed from Richmond with a cargo of 135 slaves from the Virginia plantation.  Near the Bahama Islands one of the slaves named Washington, as by the way a good many thousand slaves were named from time to time, headed a rebellion.  The slaves succeeded in overpowering the crew and in confining the captain and the white passengers.  They forced the captain to take the boat to New Providence, where all except the actual members of the rebelling crowd were declared free.

Joshua Giddings, of Ohio, offered a resolution in the House of Representatives claiming that every man who had been a slave in the United States was free the moment he crossed the boundary of some other country.  The way in which this resolution was received led to the resignation of Mr. Giddings.  He offered himself for re-election, and was sent back to Congress by an enormous majority.  As Ohio had been very bitter in its anti-negro demonstrations, the vote was regarded as very significant.  The Supreme Court decided differently from the people, and a ruling was handed down to the effect that fugitive slaves were liable to re-capture.  The court held that the law as to slavery was paramount in free as well as slave States, and that every law-abiding citizen must recognize these rights and not interfere with them.  Feeling became very intense after this, and for a time it threatened to extend far beyond rational limits.  In the church the controversy waxed warm, and in more than one instance division as well as dissension arose.

In 1858, a new phase was given to the controversy by John Brown.  Every one has heard of this remarkable man, who was regarded by some as a martyr, and by others as a dangerous crank.  As one writer very aptly puts it, John Brown was both the one and the other.  That his intentions were in the main good, few doubt, but his methods were open to the gravest censure, and according to some deep thinkers he was, in a large degree, responsible for the bitter feeling which made war between the North and the South inevitable.  Probably this is giving undue importance to this much-discussed enthusiast, who regarded himself as a divine messenger sent to liberate the slaves and punish the slave-holders.