WANTED POSTER FOR RUNAWAY SLAVES
Faneuil Hall, Boston's and America's oldest standing meeting house, which he claimed would one day "echo with the principles we have here set forth," now houses a sculpture of Frederick Douglass. More important, Boston really did "shake the nation" toward war, through the concerted efforts of its citizens to protect fugitive slaves. In the African Meeting House are all sorts of posters and pamphlets issued after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, put escaped bondsmen at risk of capture and return to slavery in the South.
One poster permanently on display in the meeting house urges people in the city to exercise what Henry David thoreau had labeled "Civil Disobedience" "CAUTION!" It screams in giant letters. "Colored People of Boston, One & All, You are hereby respectfully cautioned and advised, to avoid conversing with the watchmen and Police Officers of Boston, For since the recent order of the mayor & ALDERMEN, they are empowered to act as KIDNAPPERS and Slave Catchers, And they have already been actually employed in KIDNAPPING, CATCHING, AND KEEPING slaves." As one of the more northern of northern cities, Boston represented for many fugitives the gateway to freedom in Canada, the final stop on the Underground Railroad. Scattered around Beacon Hill are the safe houses where escaped slaves once hid from kidnappers.
Revised: July 18, 2013.
