Courier Building

Courier Building. The Freedom Trail. ”It is treason, treason, TREASON, and nothing else.” . Daniel Webster, about refusing to carry out the Fugitive Slave Law, 1851. . . On September 18, 1850, President Millard Fillmore signed the Fugitive Slave Act, requiring federal marshals to capture people accused of escaping from slavery, and mandating that accused persons could not testify on their own behalf. Those who helped freedom seekers could be fined the enormous sum of $1000 for each-person they helped, plus spend up to six months in jail. Judges who supported slave catchers received ten dollars. If they ruled for the accused, they received only five dollars. . . The Syracuse Standard called this law "arbitrary, tyrannical, unnecessary," and "obnoxious," and the law aroused immediate opposition in Syracuse. Within two days, African Americans organized a protest meeting. Chaired by James Baker (a 40-year-old whitewasher, member of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, and freedom seeker from Georgia), the meeting resolved "that we hold this truth to be self evident, that a man's right to himself is God given," and "that hereafter we will wear daggers in our belts, as a mark of the respect we feel for the passage of the recent Slave catching Bill." On October 4, 1850, more than 500 Syracuse citizens met in City Hall to form a biracial Vigilance 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. . This historical marker was erected by Preservation Association of Central New York, City of Syracuse, and Onondaga Historical Association. It is in Syracuse in Onondaga County New York