Are you of Northern Birth?

You’re a stranger in Waxahachie and the county vigilance committee has just passed a resolution that all persons who were from northern states, recent immigrants, or strangers would be suspected of Abolitionism, unless they could produce “satisfactory evidence” that they held no antislavery opinions.

You are informed that “Northern men of recent emigration, of all classes, trades, and profession must, in justice to ourselves, be watched, until they have proven themselves reliable. Dangerous times demand and justify this course.”

There is talk that one man from Fort Worth said that “the universal sentiment” of his town was that “it was better for us to hang ninety-nine innocent (suspicious) men than to let one guilty one pass, for the guilty one endangers the peace of society, and every man coming from a northern State should live above suspicion.”¹

1. Rumors circulate that Dallas burned. You go to investigate.Can you prove who you are? Should you escape out of town as quickly as you can? There is still more information to discover in Ellis County. You must move carefully. Do you continue to investigate the fire?
   
   
2. You learn that a clerk was hanged in town. You investigate, regardless of the personal dangers you face.