Evansville (IN) Daily Journal, "The Test of Unionism," June 20, 1861

          The Test of Unionism. 

   The following able article, from the pen of H. Fauntieroy, Esq., now a resident of this place, and late of Nashville, was written on the 16th of April last, for the Banner of that city, and was put in type, but withdrawn and returned to the author on account of the excitement and terrorism that forbade its publication. At the request of many of his friends, we give it to the public as a sample of the writer's bold and courageous advocacy, at the peril of his safety, of the cause of the Union, uncompromising devotion to which induced him to leave the State upon its treasonable defection:

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   Is the Fugitive Slave Law less vigorously enforced now than heretofore, so as to give us new cause of offence and grievance? We have just read accounts of the arrest of five fugitive slaves at Chicago, and of their restitution to their owners. So energetically are Mr. Lincoln's Marshals fulfilling his pledges for the faithful execution of that law, that there is a perfect stampede among the escaped negroes in the Northern States to get to Canada, lest they be apprehended and remanded to the South. The truth is, that this law has been enforced to an extent in the Northern States that has elicited expressions of astonishment from the English press, which declared that a law, so repugnant to the feelings of a people, among whom it is to operate, as the American Fugitive Slave Law, could not be enforced anywhere on the globe, except in America. Are we so blind to our own security as to break with this people, who, against the strong prejudices of education and instincts of nature, thus fulfil their constitutional obligations to us? Release them from these obligations––make them your enemies, and open a way as broad as five great States for the exodus of your slave population! What preposterous folly and madness that would be. And for what––why do this? We have seen that there is no new policy; no legislation, no grievance to warrant a change in our relation to our Government. Our slave interests, the bone of contention, are  invested with infinitely greater security now than at any former period, on account of a better understanding of many mooted points of controversy between the North and the South.

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[Editor's Note:  The majority of this article has been omitted from our transcription except for the portions directly mentioning the term "slave stampedes" or some variant.]