The Freedom Trail

— The Underground Railroad —

Committee.
The federal government struck back. In May 1851, from a balcony on the east side of the Courier Building (then known as Frazee Hall), U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster challenged the people of Syracuse. If they refused to carry out the Fugitive Slave Law, he said, "they are traitors, and are guilty of treason... It is treason, treason, TREASON, and nothing else." The federal government, he said, would enforce the Fugitive Slave Law in Syracuse "in the midst of the next anti-slavery convention, if the occasion shall arise." Rev. Samuel J. May, standing in the crowd, said that "indignation flashed from many eyes in that assembly, and one might almost hear the gritting of teeth in defiance of the threat."
On October 1, 1851, the U.S. government carried out Webster's promise. While the antislavery Liberty Party convention met at the First Congregational Church just west of the Courier Building, Federal marshal William Allen arrested William "Jerry" Henry, a cooper who had escaped from slavery in Missouri. A biracial group of hundreds of Syracuse citizens, both men and women, helped William "Jerry" Henry successfully escape to Kingston, Ontario, and the federal government never again tried to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law in Syracuse.

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