Man Complains About Abolitionist Agitators, Vt Law Against Fugitive Slave Act For Sale

In March 1851, incumbent Democratic Governor Samuel Dinsmor Jr. won reelection against Whig nominee Thomas E. Sawyer, who was a Free-Soil candidate. The Free-Soil platform openly denounced the institution of slavery. Our writer, W.W. EASTMAN was clearly on the Dinsmore side as he writes strongly opposing abolitionism and those who were promoting it.

2 pp, 8 x 9 ¾, ALS, Eastman writes from Bellow Falls Hotel, [VT], March 13th, 1851, to W.C. STUROE of Sunapee, NH. With highly political content, Eastman complains about “the agitators who are laboring with blind malice to overturn the Union sending forth agents to incite slaves to forsake their masters.” Eastman writes that he is “in Federal Vermont but am not changed although they made a law or passed resolutions nullifying the Fugitive Slave Law...With luck I leave this place tomorrow...”

“...Being in a political fervor for a few days past and having my brain somewhat excited...leaves me in a state of feeling that I would like to say a few words about election. I find by the returns that things have you nearly as might have been expected. Dinsmor is not elected by the people but comes up to it pretty well. Morrison in Kittredge is defeated and for now, I am sure when I think of it, but we see what has done it when we look at the vote for Governor and the vote for Rep. – to Congress but we may say that the democracy of New Hampshire is not all sold to Fanacticks. Dinsmore and Sawyers will be the two highest candidates so according to our laws...John Atwell cannot be a candidate in the Legislature. It will be between D[insmor] and S[awyer] and I think it is a fact that there will be a Democratic Majority in the House. Some few Democrats (as they style themselves) together with the free-soil party have tried their best to excite the people of New Hampshire against the course of the Democratic Party in the attempts to overturn law and set justice at defiance. In their persistence Democrats whose only chance of political power lies in the hold they can secure on abolitionist fanaticism, this course of the Democracy may not, I hope be shaken, but all good citizens will rejoice in this stand taken by the Democratic Party for law and order. We may have our prejudices, but it should not be forgotten that the South has Rights. Nor can any man of sense but rejoice to think that we have some men among us who are opposed to the agitations who are laboring with blind malice to overturn the Union sending forth agents to incite the slave to forsake his master thwarting the operation of the law of the land – awaking by systematic calmly and inhuman abuse [of] every black person to expend its fury upon our fellow citizens in the south...I think is clear to those that have taken a decided stand be for election for rebuking this cool spirit and for upholding our glorious Constitution. A great and happy people will approve of the course taken by the Democratic Party of N.H. at the present time and will endorse with precision the noble result of defeating the traitor of his party than bury it up [by] the abolition party...”

This letter offers a decidedly different sentiment for the time when both New Hampshire and Vermont were filled with abolitionists.

New Hampshire had few slaves when this letter was written but in 1857 a law was passed formally ending slavery. Vermont was one of the most active states involved in the anti-slavery movement before the Civil War. In fact, many slaves escaped through the Vermont Underground Railroad. Vermont became the first colony to outright ban slavery on July 2, 1777. The Fugitive Slave Act, passed by Congress in 1850, levied penalties against abolitionists who would help slaves escape and provided that slave owners could capture their escaped slaves and return them to their plantations. Vermont passed a series of resolutions making it difficult to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act.

Letter has folds and a two-inch stain on the left, bleeding through the pages, but not obscuring the text. Integral address leaf with a beautiful postmark of Bellow Falls and a 5-cent manuscript stamp.

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