Lowell (MA) Citizen & News, “Fugitive Slave,” June 23, 1859

FUGITIVE SLAVE. At Washington, yesterday, a colored man who had for twelve years lived at the national capital was seized as a fugitive slave by a slaveholder from Hagerstown, Maryland. The prisoner claimed to be a free man, and a large number of his friends and neighbors offered to prove him so, but Judge Merrick decided that under the fugitive law he had no right to enquire into that question but must deliver him to the claimant without allowing any testimony as to the freedom of the colored man! He did accordingly and the man was at once removed to Maryland. What will future generations say of such a law as this? Is not a man who believes this to be law and who willingly consents to enforce such a law, unworthy of religious fellowship? Like the Baptist church at Zanesville, Ohio, we say most decidedly - Yes!