The Jerry McHenry Rescue and the Growth of Northern Antislavery Sentiment during the 1850s

Abstract

In his second annual message to the Congress on 2 December 1851, President Millard Fillmore defended his administration's enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law. Although “lawless and violent mobs” had resisted federal officers trying to enforce the statute, he happily noted that resistance was sporadic and ineffectual: I congratulate you and the country upon the general acquiescence in these measures of peace which has been exhibited in all parts of the Republic … [T]he spirit of reconciliation which has been manifested in regard to them [the 1850 compromise measures] in all parts of the country has removed doubts and uncertainties in the minds of thousands of good men concerning the duration of our popular institutions and given renewed assurance that our liberty and our Union may subsist together for the benefit of this and succceding generations. Fillmore also received support from both the Democrats and Whigs; at their national conventions in 1852 they pledged to honor the Compromise of 1850 and earnestly hoped that sectional differences would wane.