The scandal received a great deal of press and badly tarnished the Know Nothings. Slavery Before Gardner's election, on May 24, 1854, Anthony Burns was arrested in Boston as a fugitive under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Edward G. Loring, a Suffolk County probate judge who also served as U.S. commissioner of the Circuit Court in Massachusetts, ordered that Burns be forced back into slavery in Virginia, outraging abolitionists and the increasingly antislavery public in Massachusetts. Under the pressure of a public petition campaign spearheaded by William Lloyd Garrison, the legislature passed two Bills of Address, in 1855 and 1856, calling for Judge Loring to be removed from his state office, but in both cases Gardner declined to remove Loring. A third Bill of Address to remove Loring from office was later approved by Gardner's Republican successor, Nathaniel Prentice Banks. The Know-Nothing legislature also passed, over Gardner's veto, one of the most stringent personal liberty laws, designed to make enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 as difficult for slave claimants as possible. Gardner said that the law would exacerbate relations between North and South, and called for its repeal. Minority parties in the legislature sought to weaken the bill, but its major provisions, including rights of habeas corpus, jury trial, and state-funded defense, survived. Later elections In 1855 the national Know Nothing convention split on the subject of slavery. Prominent antislavery Know Nothing supporters in Massachusetts, including Henry Wilson, began another attempt (after having failed in 1854) to form a party with abolition as a major focus. This effort resulted in the formation of the Republican Party, which sought to negotiate with the Know Nothings for a fusion of the two parties. However, Massachusetts Know Nothing leadership refused fusion and Republican leadership refused coalition, with many Republicans skeptical of Gardner's fidelity to the antislavery cause despite his support for fusion. The parties ended up fielding separate slates of candidates, and many Know Nothing politicians and supporters switched allegiance. In the fall election Gardner, running on a strictly nativist platform, garnered 38% of the vote, to the 27% of Republican Julius Rockwell. With the new plurality voting rule in effect, Gardner won the election, but the split (and disaffection in some circles with the Know Nothing agenda) cost him support from former Free Soilers and Democrats. In the 1856 election Gardner benefited from a deal with the Republicans,