Long was working in a restaurant after having been a fugitive in New York for several years. As his self-proclaimed owner John T. Smith from Richmond, Virginia sued for his return under the new Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Horace Greeley and the American Anti-Slavery Society tried to gain Long's freedom after he was captured. This was one of several test cases of the new law. Fear of its implementation resulted in hundreds of fugitive slaves going to Canada from New York and Massachusetts, as they felt vulnerable to slave catchers. Prominent fugitives and abolitionists Ellen and William Craft migrated from Boston to England to ensure their safety. Long's case was first given to a federal commissioner, newly appointed under the law. He referred it to federal court. Despite the defense by Jay, Judge Judson found in favor of the owner. Many in New York were outraged, and 200 police were called upon to enforce Long's being taken to the ferry for passage to New Jersey, where he was taken by railroad to Virginia. There he was sold to a planter from Georgia and forced to work on a cotton plantation. In 1852, Jay successfully led a team of attorneys in a freedom suit, Lemmon v. New York, gaining the release in New York City's Superior Court of eight slaves brought to New York by their Virginia owners, who were stopping over in the city prior to sailing to relocate to Texas. New York had passed a law prohibiting slave transit. Like some other free states, New York said that slaves brought voluntarily to the state by their owners in transit would be considered free. A considerable network of black and white activists kept watch for fugitive and transit slaves and took action to free them. In the case of the Lemmon slaves, activist Louis Napoleon, one of an important trio, was alerted and gained a habeas corpus writ requiring them to be presented to court. Jay, Erastus D. Culver and the young Chester A. Arthur (future president of the United States) defended them. The ruling was upheld through two levels of appeals in state courts, the second ruling made in 1860. The case was never heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, because the Civil War broke out. In 1854, Jay organized the series of popular political meetings in the Broadway Tabernacle. The next year, he was prominently identified with