Courier Building
c. 1844
NW corner of East Washington and Montgomery Streets
Syracuse, New York
In May 1851, from the balcony that still remains on the east side of this building, Daniel Webster, Secretary of State, issued a challenge. 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.” This set the context for the famous rescue of William “Jerry” Henry on October 1, 1851.
At the end of the Mexican War in May 1848, the United States found itself the owner of vast territories of land that had once belonged to Mexico and now formed part of the southwestern and western U.S., including the territories of California and New Mexico. Discovery of gold in California in 1849 led to a rapid influx of settlers into California. Southern politicians feared the political imbalance, particularly in the Senate, that would result from California’s admission as a free state. The Compromise of 1850 was an attempt to keep the Union together by giving white southerners assurances that the federal government would help to protect slavery.
Over 600 people in Syracuse signed a call for a meeting to be held in the Syracuse City Hall on May 16, 1850, to discuss the proposed compromise. Alfred H. Hovey, Mayor, chaired the meeting. Participants unequivocally supported the admission of California as a free state, opposed territorial governments for New Mexico and Utah that did not prohibit slavery, opposed any fugitive slave law, and declared that “we should rejoice to witness the removal of this stain [slavery in Washington, D.C.] upon the national character.” (Petition to the House of Representatives, HR31A-G23.1, National Archives).
When President Millard Fillmore signed the Compromise of 1850 into law on September 18, 1850, it contained every one of the provisions that local citizens had opposed.
Most odious was a new Fugitive Slave Law. This law provided that:
•federal marshals must assist slave-catchers
•people who helped freedom seekers could be fined $1000 (plus
$1000 more for each person they assisted) and jailed for six
months
•accused people could not testify in their own behalf.
•U.S. Commissioners who ruled for the pursuers would be paid
$10. If they ruled in favor of the freedom seekers, they
would be paid $5.
Immediately, local African Americans organized a meeting “in the Fayette Street church,” perhaps the AME Zion Church on South Crouse Street near Fayette) to oppose it. James Baker, himself a freedom seeker from Georgia and a member of the Wesleyan Church, chaired the meeting, and S. King was secretary. They discussed several resolutions, “offered by different members, and discussed manfully and fearlessly, to the great delight of those present.” The Syracuse Standard listed these:
Resolved, That the government of the United States affords us no protection. Therefore,
Resolved, That it is our duty to protect ourselves at the expense of life, if need be.
Resolved, That we hold this truth to be self-evident, that a man’s right to himself is God given, and the protection of that is the first law of nature—therefore he is justifiable in resorting to any means, even if it be the taking of the life of him who seeks to deprive us of what is dearer than life, viz: Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Resolved, That in view of the passage of the Slave catching Bill by the representative of this bloated land of Liberty, that we the colored citizens of Syracuse, will join hand in hand, and will take the scalp of any government hound, that dares follow on our track, as we are resolved to be free, if it is not until after death.
Resolved, That we will go into Committee of the Whole, on the state of our Liberties. And we hereby warn our Postmasters, and other Government officers, against any approach towards robbing our cottages of our wives and helpless infants, for we will slay them as we could any other legalized land pirates; and we will call our friends about us to aid us in maintaining our rights, for we regard the moral force of “the law,” as Samson did the withes with which Delilah bound him.
Resolved, 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.
(Syracuse Standard, September 24, 1850)
On October 4, 1850, a biracial group met at the City Hall (site of the current City Hall). Called by European Americans, it was chaired by A.H. Hovey, Mayor of Syracuse. (All quotations about this meeting are from the Syracuse Standard, October 7, 1850, OHA files)
Both Samuel R. Ward and Jermain Loguen, themselves fugitives from slavery, addressed this meeting. Ward noted that “if any one should come to take him or his family into slavery, it would be well for him to first perform two acts for the benefit of himself and his family—He should first make his will, and then make his peace with his Maker.”
Loguen said
that he had spent upwards of twenty years of his life in slavery, and he
would never be taken back there alive. He had resided in this city
several years, and endeavored to maintain the character of a good
citizen, an honest man, and a Christian. He alluded in a feeling manner
to his family, mentioning them severally byname; said it was his duty to
protect them, and he should do so if necessary, at the expense of his life.
Rev. R.R. Raymond spoke “for a few minutes in an eloquent and forcible manner. He professed to be a man of peace and a minister of God,” he said, “but he deemed it to be his duty to oppose this most unrighteous law.”
Whether it was constitutional or not it was opposed to the law of God,
that “higher law” which he held to be “above the Constitution.” He said he was a small man, and Mr. Loguen a large man, but, said he, when I met him in the street shortly after the passage of this bill—I looked up at him, and told him I would protect him. (Laughter.) He said his house was open for the protection of persons fleeing from oppression, that as many as could crowd into it from cellar to garret, were welcome to come, and no one should be taken from there to be carried back into hopeless servitude—and he be left alive.
Rev. Samuel J. May noted that
his house, too, was open as a refuge for the panting fugitive—he was well nown as a non-resistant—but whoever supposed that non- resistance meant standing still, folding our arms, and quietly looking on, should come to him and learn better. If any one should come to his house for protection—he would protect him.
The meeting passed several resolutions, including:
Resolved, That “the Fugitive Slave Law,” recently enacted by the Congress of these United States is a most flagrant outrage upon the inalienable rights of man and a daring assault upon the Palladium of American liberties, OUR CONSTITUTION,
Resolved, That every intelligent man and woman, throughout our country, ought to read attentively, and understand the provisions of this law in all its details; so that they may be fully aware of its diabolical spirit, and cruel ingenuity, and prepare themselves to oppose all attempts to enforce it.
Daniel Webster, Secretary of State under President Millard Fillmore, had worked hard to insure passage of the Compromise of 1850, and one resolution, attacked him directly:
Resolved, That to none in all our country, should be attributed the passage of this most wicked law, so much as to Daniel Webster; and that hereafter he cannot be called the Defender of the Constitution, except in bitter irony.
This meeting appointed a Vigilance Committee of thirteen men (Charles A. Wheaton, Lyman Clary, Vivus W. Smith, Charles B. Sedgwick, Hiram Putnam, E.W. Leavenworth, Abner Bates, George Barnes, P.H. Agan, J.W. Loguen, John Wilkinson, R.R. Raymond, and John Thomas) to organize resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law. They also sent a copies of the minutes of this meeting to various places, including Congress. The handwritten copy still remains in the National Archives.
At a second meeting on October 11, people signed a petition to Congress to repeal the Fugitive Slave Law and resolved “that we are bound to regard as enemies to their country and mankind, all those, amongst us, who, for the sake of their political party, or for their own pecuniary emolument, in any way aid and abet, or who refuse openly to discountenance, the enforcement of this most atrocious law.” (Syracuse Standard, October 14, 1850).
On October 15, “a large and respectable meeting of citizens” met at the Congregational church to make “common cause, in view of various arrests rumored to have been made, or to be made under the Fugitive Slave act, and on charges of Treason.” Enoch Marks, European American, chaired the meeting, and George B. Vashon, African American, was secretary. Unlike the earlier meeting of African Americans alone, this one emphasized their commitment to nonviolent action, as they pledged
our fortunes and our sacred honor, to stand by those individuals on
whom this hand of government may fall; that we will help to bear with
them any pecuniary losses to which they may be subjected, and
manifest in every way we can, our sympathy for them, and show that
we suffer as those who are bound with them.” (Syracuse Standard,
October 16, 1851).
Speakers at this meeting include C.A. Wheaton, Reverend R.R. Raymond, Rev. Samuel J. May, William H. Burleigh, Lyman Clary, and George Barnes.
In this context, Daniel Webster was invited to Syracuse to defend his position in May 1851. As a potential presidential candidate, he was anxious to explain himself. Speaking from the balcony of Frazee Hall (as it was then called) to a crowd assembled in the area around the City Hall/Market Hall, he asserted that the Fugitive Slave Law was constitutional, that slavery was wrong (and that slave-holders themselves recognized this), that abolitionists had exacerbated the problem, that he himself had never voted to extend slavery into Texas, and that he support provisions in the Compromise of 1850 that allowed residents of the New Mexico territory to vote on slavery only because he knew that slavery would never be extended there.
But Webster reserved his most quotable lines for the actions of those who opposed the Fugitive Slave Law in Syracuse. “We hear of persons assembling in Massachusetts and New York,” he noted
who set up themselves over the Constitution, above the law, and above the decisions of the highest tribunals, and who say this law shall not be carried into effect. You have heard it here, have you not? Has it not been so said in the County of Onondaga? (Cries of Yes, yes) And have they not pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to defeat its execution? Pledged their lives, their fortunes, and sacred honor!—for what? For the violation of the law, for the committal of treason to the country; for it is treason, and nothing else.
I am a lawyer, and I value my reputation as a lawyer more than anything else, and I tell you, if men get together and declare a law of Congress shall not be executed in any case and assemble in numbers to prevent the execution of saw laws, they are traitors, and are guilty of treason, and bring upon themselves the penalties of the law.
No! It is time to put an end to this imposition upon good citizens, good men and good women. It is treason, treason, TREASON, and nothing else (cheers).
Finally, Webster made his intent perfectly clear: “Depend upon it, the law will be executed in its spirit, and to its letter. It will be executed in all the great cities; here in Syracuse; in the midst of the next Anti-Slavery Convention, if the occasion shall arise; then we shall see what becomes of their lives and their sacred honor.”
Five months later, on October 1, 1851, Syracusans, both African American and European American, successfully carried out the rescue of William “Jerry” Henry. Eighteen months later, on October 24, 1852, Daniel Webster died.
Variously called Frazee Hall, Temperance Hall, or the Courier building, this structure is one of only five buildings or blocks of buildings still standing in downtown Syracuse that date from before the Civil War. (The others are the Dana Block, c. 1834; the Wesleyan Chapel, 1845; the Hamilton White house, c. 1842; and Plymouth Church, 1859.) Chicago windows have replaced the original sashes on the south and southeast corner of the building, but nine-over-nine sashes on the northeast section suggest what it may once have looked like. The building still retains the balcony from which Webster spoke on its east side. (Hardin, 111-12, 142)
Hardin, Evamaria, Syracuse Landmarks: An AIA Guide to Downtown and
Historic Neighborhoods. Syracuse: Onondaga Historical Association and
Syracuse University Press, 1993.
Newspaper articles in Syracuse Standard, as noted, courtesy OHA.
Petition to House of Representatives, HR31A-G23.1, courtesy National Archives
and Records Administration.
Webster, Daniel, “Speech at Syracuse,” Addresses Hitherto Uncollected, 408-421.
Further research
For this survey, no research was done on the building itself. Deeds, assessments, newspaper articles, and perhaps mortgages would help reveal the building’s name and use over time, as well as the chronology of its construction.