"Such Underground activities were kept secret for years, but in January, 1860, all Fairfield was suddenly awakened to the realization that slavery had a long arm ready to grab victims even there.
On the last Sunday morning that month, two young white men passed through going south. They had with them two Negro girls, about 11 and 14 years old. They were soon followed by a young man named Allen, at whose home they had stopped for breakfast. The more he had thought about them, the more he suspected that the men were carrying off the children as slaves. In Fairfield Allen secured warrants for their arrest, and they were pursued, arrested at Iowaville, and brought back. One was put in jail and one released on a bond signed by Colonel James Thompson, Samuel Jacobs, and William H. Hamilton, all highly respect citizens, but all pro-slavery democrats. The preliminary hearing was hardly over when the sheriff of Jefferson County appeared and took the men into custody on the charge of kidnapping. They were taken to Iowa City for trial, but they had brought the issue of slavery sharply before the people of Fairfield. Sadly, opinion on it was bitterly divided." A Fair Field, by Susan Fulton Welty, 1976, page 107
