The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18
THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW AND ITS VICTIMS. AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, 138 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK. 1856. ANTI-SLAVERY TRACTS. No. 18. * * * * * THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW, AND ITS VICTIMS.
colony was extinguished in blood. The land seemed to be left free for
other occupants.
Years before, the great Gustavus Adolphus had pondered and decided on an
enterprise of colonization in America.[76:1] The exigencies of the
Thirty Years' War delayed the execution of his plan, but after the fatal
day of Luetzen the project resumed by the fit successor of Gustavus in
the government of Sweden, the Chancellor Oxenstiern. Peter Minuit, who
had been rejected from his place as the first governor of New Amsterdam,
tendered to the Swedes the aid of his experience and approved wisdom;
and in the end of the year 1637, against the protest of Governor Kieft,
the strong foundations of a Swedish Lutheran colony were laid on the
banks of the Delaware. A new purchase was made of the Indians (who had
as little scruple as the Stuart kings about disposing of the same land
twice over to different parties), including the lands from the mouth of
the bay to the falls near Trenton. A fort was built where now stands the
city of Wilmington, and under the protection of its walls Christian
worship was begun by the first pastor, Torkillus. Strong reinforcements
arrived in 1643, with the energetic Governor Printz and that man of
"unwearied zeal in always propagating the love of God," the Rev. John
Campanius, who through faith has obtained a good report by his brief
most laborious ministry both to his fellow-countrymen and to the
Delaware Indians.
The governor fixed his residence at Tinicum, now almost included within
the vast circumference of Philadelphia, and there, forty years before
THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW AND ITS VICTIMS. AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, 138 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK. 1856. ANTI-SLAVERY TRACTS. No. 18. * * * * * THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW, AND ITS VICTIMS.