He would by a timely concession avert the catastrophe which the Southern leaders threatened, and he probably warded off the inevitable combat when, in 1850, he made his great speech, in favor of sacrificing the Wilmot Proviso, and enacting a more stringent fugitive-slave law.

SEE Brand, Max. Fugitives fire.

He issued a rigorous fugitive-serf law, and even wrenched liberty from certain free peasants who had entered service for wages before his edicts.

Even Trenck's sister, instigated thereto by her husband, who feared to incur the displeasure of Frederick the Great, refused the poor fugitives shelter, money, or as much as a crust of bread, and this after Trenck had jeopardized his liberty by returning to Prussian soil in order to meet her.

Time after time I saw famished fugitives pause at farmhouses and offer all of their pitifully few belongings for a loaf of bread; but the kind- hearted country-people, with tears streaming down their cheeks, could only shake their heads and tell them that they had long since given all their food away.

We moved on slowly through a dense throng of fugitives men, women, and little childrenall with bundles over their shoulders, in which was all that they possessed.

Quakers who then lived in free States offered fugitives material assistance by open and clandestine methods.