F.S.A. The Jerry Rescue - 1851

(Jerry Rescue article with quotes from letters by Gerrit Smith and Frederick Douglas on the event) 


A number of abolitionists lived in Central New York and the Finger Lakes region  close to Canada.  Syracuse became an active center for the abolitionist movement and the underground railroad due in large part to the influence of Gerrit Smith and a group allied with him, mostly associated with the Unitarian Church and their pastor, Reverend Samuel May in Syracuse, as well as Quakers in nearby Skaneateles, supported by abolitionists in many other religious congregations.  Other prominent abolitionists from the area were Frederick Douglass, Millard Fillmore, Matilda Joslyn Gage, John W. Jones, William Marks and Harriet Tubman. 


Arrest and rescue

In October of 1851, the anti-slavery Liberty Party was holding its state convention in the city.  
Earlier that year, Secretary of State Daniel Webster had warned that the law would be enforced even "here in Syracuse in the midst of the next Anti-Slavery Convention."  


On October 1, William "Jerry" Henry was arrested in Syracuse under the Fugitive Slave Law.   The arrest was considered a message that the locally unpopular law would be seriously enforced by federal authorities. 

When word of the arrest spread, several hundred abolitionists, including Charles Augustus Wheaton, broke into the city jail and freed him.  The event came to be widely known as the Jerry Rescue.  Henry was hidden in Syracuse for several days, then was taken first to the Orson Ames House in Mexico, New York, and then to Oswego, where he crossed Lake Ontario into Canada. 

Congregationalist minister Samuel Ringgold Ward had to himself flee to Canada to escape persecution for his participation. 


Trial

The trial took place that same day in the Townsend Building in Clinton Square, Syracuse, in the second floor office of the U.S. Commissioner Sabine, who tried the case. It was his first trial. Jerry had escaped during the afternoon session, and Sabine's office was wrecked.

A total of 13 of the rescuers were tried for their actions, but only one, Enoch Reed, a black man, was convicted.   The suspects were bailed out by a number of people, including U.S. Senator and former governor of New York William H. Seward.  Nine others, including Reverend Jermain Wesley Loguen, himself a fugitive slave, were charged, but fled to Canada. 

Jerry Rescue building

Townsend Block in Syracuse, New York in Clinton Square - The Jerry Rescue Building constructed in 1843 - Syracuse Herald

The event was commemorated in the 1850s with the renaming of the Townsend Block to the Jerry Rescue Building, which is no longer standing. The building, constructed in 1829, was located on the south side of Clinton Square, at the corner of Water and Clinton Streets. The event is now memorialized with a monument in Clinton Square, Syracuse.