Desperate to avert war, centrist Republicans and Unionists in the Bay State were considering a bill to repeal the personal liberty laws that granted fugitive slaves a modicum of protection from recapture. They wanted to voluntarily mass arrest and deport fugitive slaves as a gesture of goodwill to the South. Sumner signaled his vicious opposition. “If Massachusetts yields anything now to the outcry of the traitors, other States will yield everything,” he warned one state lawmaker, who relayed Sumner’s views to his colleagues.
