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So far as regards the correction of the Journal entry, I certainly would not allow it to stand for a moment, if I did not believe it to be correct; and until I am satisfied that it is not correct, I certainly shall direct no amendment of it. My own recollection accords with it, and differs from that of the counsel. There has been no disposition on the part of the Court to oppress or give pain to these defendants. Nothing could be further from our wishes, or more repugnant to our feelings; and until some of them were convicted, we were willing they should go at large on their own recognizances, and if there is any misapprehension upon either side, it is a mere matter of punctilio to adhere to it.

Mr. RIDDLE. There is another matter that I wish to speak of, your Honor. It was intimated to your Honor this morning, that the counsel for the defence might be disposed, after some consultation, to make a motion in the case of Langston. I have to say to your Honor that no motion will be made; Mr. Langston is prepared to receive his sentence at the earliest convenience of the Court.

Judge SPALDING. Until when will the other cases be continued, your Honor?

The COURT. Until the July term, sir. The Court has now been in session some two months, and I apprehend that the defendants will not be particularly incommoded by so brief a delay. Mr. RIDDLE. I shall take the liberty of saying, your Honor, if permitted to say nothing else, that the counsel for these defendants do not yet stand before this Court in the attitude of beggars!

Judge BELDEN and the COURT at once. By no means; certainly not, sir.

Mr. RIDDLE. The District-Attorney took pains so to represent it.

Judge BELDEN. Oh, no, sir; I meant no such thing.

Court adjourned to meet next morning at

o'clock.

CLEVELAND, May 12, 1859.

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my life before a court of Justice, charged with the violation of law, and am now about to be sentenced. But before receiving that sentence I propose to say one or two words in regard to the mitigation of that sentence, if it may be so construed. I cannot, of course, and do not expect that any thing which I may say will in any way change your predetermined line of action. I ask no such favor at your hands.

I know that the courts of this country, that the laws of this country, that the governmental machinery of this country, are so constituted as to oppress and outrage colored men, men of my complexion. I cannot, then, of course, expect, judging from the past history of the country, any mercy from the laws, from the constitution, or from the courts of the country.

Some days prior to the 13th of September, 1858, happening to be in Oberlin on a visit, I found the country round about there, and the village itself, filled with alarming rumors as to the fact that slave-catchers, kidnappers, negrostealers, were lying hidden and skulking about, waiting some opportunity to get their bloody hands on some helpless creature to drag him back or for the first time into helpless and life-long bondage. These reports becoming current all over that neighborhood, old men, and women and innocent children became exceedingly alarmed for their safety. It was not uncommon to hear mothers say that they dare not send their children to school, for fear they would be caught up and carried off by the way. Some of these people had become free by long and patient toil at night, after working the long, long day for cruel masters, and thus at length getting money enough to buy their liberty. Others had become free by means of the good-will of their masters. And there were others who had become free to their everlasting honor I say it by the exercise of their own God-given powers; - by escaping from the plantations of their masters, eluding the blood-thirsty patrols and sentinels so thickly scattered all along their path, outrunning bloodhounds and horses, swimming rivers and fording swamps, and reaching at last, through incredible difficulties, what they, in their delusion, supposed to be free soil. These three classes were in Oberlin, trembling alike for their safety, because they well knew their fate should those men-hunters get their hands on them.

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In the midst of such excitement, the 13th day of September was ushered in a day ever to be remembered in the history of that place, and I presume no less in the history of this Court on which those men, by lying devices, decoyed into a place where they could get their hands on him- I will not say a slave, for I do not know that but a man, a brother, who had a right to his liberty under the laws of God, under the laws of Nature, and under the Decla ration of American Independence.

Many of us had believed that there would not be courage to make a seizure; but in the

midst of all this excitement, the news came to us like a flash of lightning that an actual seizure by means of fraudulent pretences had

been made!

Being identified with that man, by color, by race, by manhood, by sympathies, such as God has implanted in us all, I felt it my duty to go and do what I could toward liberating him. I had been taught by my Revolutionary fatherand I say this with all due respect to him and by his honored associates, that the fundamental doctrine of this government was that all men have a right to life and liberty, and coming from the Old Dominion, I brought into Ohio these sentiments, deeply impressed upon my heart. I went to Wellington, and hearing from the parties themselves by what authority the boy was held in custody, I conceived, from what little knowledge I had of law, that they had no right to hold him. And as your Honor has repeatedly laid down the law in this Court, that in the State of Ohio a man is presumed to be free until he is proven to be legally restrained of his liberty, I believed that upon that principle of law those men were bound to take their prisoner before the very first magistrate they found, and there establish the facts set forth in their warrant, and that until they did this every man had a right to presume that their claim was unfounded, and to institute such proceedings for the purpose of securing an investigation as he might find warranted by the laws of this State. Now, sir, if that is not the plain, common sense and correct view of the law, then I have been misled both by your Honor, and by the prevalent received opinion.

It is said that they had a warrant. Why then should they not establish its validity before the proper officers? And I stand here today, sir, to say, that, with an exception, of which I shall soon speak, to procure such a lawful investigation of the authority under which they claimed to act, was the part I took in that day's proceedings, and the only part. I supposed it to be my duty as a citizen of Ohio excuse me for saying that, sir as an outlaw of the United States [much sensation], to do what I could to secure at least this form of Justice to my brother whose liberty was in peril. Whatever more than that has been sworn to on this trial, as an act of mine, is false, ridiculously false. When I found these men refusing to go, according to the law, as I apprehended it, and subject their claim to an official inspection, and that nothing short of a habeas corpus would oblige such an inspection, I was willing to go even thus far, supposing in that county a sheriff might, perhaps, be found with nerve enough to serve it. In this again I failed. Nothing then was left to me, nothing to the boy in custody, but the confirmation of my first belief that the pretended authority was worth less, and the employment of those means of liberation which belong to us all. With regard to the part I took in the forcible rescue, which

followed, I have nothing to say, farther than I have already said. The evidence is before you. It is alleged that I said, "we will have him any how." This I NEVER said. I did say to Mr. Lowe, what I honestly believed to be the truth, that the crowd were very much excited, many of them averse to longer delay and bent upon a rescue at all hazards; and that he being an old acquaintance and friend of mine, I was anxious to extricate him from the dangerous position he occupied, and therefore advised that he urge Jennings to give the boy up. Further than this I did not say, either to him or to any one else.

The law under which I am arraigned is an unjust one, one made to crush the colored man, and one that outrages every feeling of Humanity, as well as every rule of Right. I have nothing to do with its constitutionality; and about it I care a great deal less. I have often heard it said by learned and good men that it was unconstitutional; I remember the excitement that prevailed throughout all the free States when it was passed; and I remember how often it has been said by individuals, conventions, communities, and legislatures, that it never could be, never should be, and never was meant to be enforced. I had always believed, until the contrary appeared in the actual institution of proceedings, that the provisions of this odious statute would never be enforced within the bounds of this State.

But I have another reason to offer why I should not be sentenced, and one that I think pertinent to the case. I have not had a trial before a jury of my peers. The common law of England—and you will excuse me for referring to that, since I am but a private citizen and not a lawyer-was that every man should be tried before a jury of men occupying the same position in the social scale with himself. That lords should be tried before a jury of lords; that peers of the realm should be tried before peers of the realm; vassals before vassals, and aliens before aliens, and they must not come from the district where the crime was committed, lest the prejudices of either personal friends or foes should affect the accused. The Constitution of the United States guarantees - not merely to its citizens—but to all persons a trial before an impartial jury. I have had no such trial.

The colored man is oppressed by certain universal and deeply fixed prejudices. Those jurors are well known to have shared largely in these prejudices, and I therefore consider that they were neither impartial, nor were they a jury of my peers. And the prejudices which white people have against colored men, grow out of this fact: that we have, as a people, consented for two hundred years to be slaves of the whites. We have been scourged, crushed, and cruelly oppressed, and have submitted to it all tamely, meekly, peaceably; I mean as a people, and with rare individual exceptions;

and to-day you see us thus, meekly submitting to the penalties of an infamous law. Now the Americans have this feeling, and it is an honorable one, that they will respect those who will rebel at oppression, but despise those who tamely submit to outrage and wrong; and while our people as a people submit, they will as a people be despised. Why, they will hardly meet on terms of equality with us in a whiskey shop, in a car, at a table, or even at the altar of God. So thorough and hearty a contempt have they for those who will meekly lie still under the heel of the oppressor. The jury came into the box with that feeling. They knew they had that feeling, and so the Court knows now, and knew then. The gentlemen who prosecuted me have that feeling, the Court itself has that feeling, and even the counsel who defended me have that feeling.

myself, and that by the decision of your Honor, if any man whatever were to claim me as his slave and seize me, and my brother, being a lawyer, should seek to get out a writ of habeas corpus to expose the falsity of the claim, he would be thrust into prison under one provision of the Fugitive Slave Law, for interfering with the man claiming to be in pursuit of a fugitive, and I, by the perjury of a solitary wretch, would, by another of its provisions, be helplessly doomed to life-long bondage, without the possibility of escape.

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Some persons may say that there is no danger of free persons being seized and carried off as slaves. No one need labor under such a delusion. Sir, four of the eight persons who were first carried back under the act of 1850, were afterwards proved to be free men. The pretended owner declared that they were not his, I was tried by a jury who were prejudiced; after his agent had "satisfied the Commissioner' before a Court that was prejudiced; prosecuted that they were, by his oath. They were free by an officer who was prejudiced, and de- persons, but wholly at the mercy of the oath of fended, though ably, by counsel that were pre-one man. And but last Sabbath afternoon a judiced. And therefore it is, your Honor, that I urge by all that is good and great in manhood, that I should not be subjected to the pains and penalties of this oppressive law, when I have not been tried, either by a jury of my peers, or by a jury that were impartial.

I

One more word, sir, and I have done. went to Wellington, knowing that colored men have no rights in the United States which white men are bound to respect; that the courts had so decided; that Congress had so enacted; that the people had so decreed.

letter came to me from a gentleman in St. Louis, informing me that a young lady, who was formerly under my instruction at Columbus, a free person, is now lying in the jail at that place, claimed as the slave of some wretch who never saw her before, and waiting for testimony from relatives at Columbus to establish her freedom. I could stand here by the hour and relate such instances. In the very nature of the case they must be constantly occurring. A letter was not long since found upon the person of a counterfeiter when arrested, addressed to him by some Southern gentleman, in which the writer says:

"Go among the niggers; find out their marks and scars, make good descriptions and send to me, and I'll find masters for 'em."

That is the way men are carried "back" to slavery.

There is not a spot in this wide country, not even by the altars of God, nor in the shadow of the shafts that tell the imperishable fame and glory of the heroes of the Revolution; no, nor in the old Philadelphia Hall, where any colored man may dare to ask a mercy of a white man. Let me stand in that Hall, and tell a United States Marshal that my father was a Revolu- But in view of all the facts I say, that if tionary soldier; that he served under Lafay-ever again a man is seized near me, and is about ette, and fought through the whole war; and to be carried Southward as a slave, before any that he always told me that he fought for my legal investigation has been had, I shall hold it freedom as much as for his own; and he would to be my duty, as I held it that day, to secure sneer at me, and clutch me with his bloody for him, if possible, a legal inquiry into the charfingers, and say he had a right to make me a acter of the claim by which he is held. And I slave! And when I appeal to Congress, they go farther; I say that if it is adjudged illegal to say he has a right to make me a slave; when I procure even such an investigation, then we are appeal to the people, they say he has a right to thrown back upon those last defences of our make me a slave, and when I appeal to your rights, which cannot be taken from us, and Honor, your Honor says he has a right to make which God gave us that we need not be slaves. me a slave, and if any man, white or black, I ask your Honor, while I say this, to place seeks an investigation of that claim, they make yourself in my situation, and you will with say themselves amenable to the pains and penalties me, that if your brother, if your friend, if your of the Fugitive Slave Act, for BLACK MEN wife, if your child, had been seized by men who HAVE NO RIGHTS WHICH WHITE MEN ARE claimed them as fugitives, and the law of the BOUND TO RESPECT. [Great applause.] I, land forbade you to ask any investigation, and going to Wellington with the full knowledge of precluded the possibility of any legal protecall this, knew that if that man was taken to tion or redress, then you will say with me, Columbus, he was hopelessly gone, no matter that you would not only demand the protection whether he had ever been in slavery before or of the law, but you would call in your neighnot. I knew that I was in the same situation bors and your friends, and would ask them to

say with you, that these your friends could not | penalty in your case should be comparatively be taken into slavery.

And now I thank you for this leniency, this indulgence, in giving a man unjustly condemned, by a tribunal before which he is declared to have no rights, the privilege of speaking in his own behalf. I know that it will do nothing toward mitigating your sentence, but it is a privilege to be allowed to speak, and I thank you for it. I shall submit to the penalty, be it what it may. But I stand up here to say, that if for doing what I did on that day at Wellington, I am to go in jail six months, and pay a fine of a thousand dollars, according to the Fugitive Slave Law, and such is the protection the laws of this country afford me, I must take upon myself the responsibility of self-protection; and when I come to be claimed by some perjured wretch as his slave, I shall never be taken into slavery. And as in that trying hour I would have others do to me, as I would call upon my friends to help me; as I would call upon you, your Honor, to help me; as I would call upon you [to the District-Attorney], to help me; and upon you [to Judge Bliss], and upon you [to his counsel], so help me GOD! I stand here to say that I will do all I can, for any man thus seized and held, though the inevitable penalty of six months imprisonment and one thousand dollars fine for each offence hangs over me! We have a common humanity. You would do so; your manhood would require it; and no matter what the laws might be, you would honor yourself for doing it; your friends would honor you for doing it; your children to all generations would honor you for doing it; and every good and honest man would say, you had done right! [Great and prolonged applause, in spite of the efforts of the Court and the Marshal.]

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The COURT. These manifestations cannot be allowed here. The Marshal has orders to clear the room if they are repeated.

You have done injustice to the Court, Mr. Langston, in thinking that nothing you might say could effect a mitigation of your sentence. You have presented considerations to which I shall attach much weight.

I am fully aware of the evidence that was given to the jury; of the circumstances that were related; of your action in relation to the investigation of the cause of the detention of the fugitive, and of your advice to others to pursue a legal course; and although I am not disposed to question the integrity of the jury, still I see mitigating circumstances in the transaction which should not require, in my opinion, the extreme penalty of the law. This Court does not make laws; that belongs to another tribunal. We sit here under the obligations of an oath to execute them, and whether they be bad or whether they be good, it is not for us to say. We appreciate fully your condition, and while it excites the cordial sympathies of our better natures, still the law must be vindicated. On reflection, I am constrained to say that the

light. It is, therefore, the sentence of the Court, that you pay a fine of one hundred dollars; that you be confined in the jail at Cuyahoga County, under the direction of the Marshal, for a period of twenty days from date; and that you pay the costs of this prosecution : and that in case any casualty or other occurrence should render your confinement there insecure, that the Marshal see the sentence executed in any other county jail within this District.

Judge SHERLOCK J. ANDREWS then informed the Court that Matthew De Wolfe, Abner Loveland, and Loring Wadsworth, citizens of Wellington, indicted for participating in the rescue case, wished him to enter a plea of nolle contendere, and were ready to submit themselves to the judgment of the Court.

Judge ANDREWs said, that he had been informed by the defendants that they were not represented by Counsel, and he had been desired to bring their case to the attention of the Court. He said they were among the oldest citizens of Lorain county, and law-abiding men, enjoying in a high degree the respect and confidence of their fellow-citizens, and that they were unwilling any longer to occupy a position in which they were charged with a wilful violation of the law. Their connection with this rescue was entirely incidental, and they had assembled with other citizens to arrest the progress of a fire which had broken out in their village, and had been hard at work in saving property, and while thus engaged, were informed that one of their magistrates had issued a warrant for the apprehension of two men charged with an attempt to kidnap a citizen of the State. The feelings of the people were strongly roused before, and when this new element was added to the other cause of excitement, the defendants admit that they yielded to the impulse that moved others, and that they did at first give encouragment to the officer in his attempt to execute the process in his hands, but they say, and are abundantly able to show, that from the time they became satisfied that the negro was held by lawful authority, they abstained from all participation in the proceedings.

Mr. Andrews said that, whether under the rulings of the Court in relation to the responsibilities of men engaged in the execution of a common unlawful purpose, or in relation to the prudence and vigilance which should be exercised in these cases, to ascertain the authority under which the fugitive is held, whether under these rulings (which he believed to be law) these men had undesignedly been guilty of a technical violation of the statute, whether, in the tumult and confusion of the hour, they were as careful in their inquiries, as guarded in their conversation and conduct as they ought to have been, he would not pretend to say; but this he would say, that they never for a moment cher

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upon having their protest recorded that they are not guilty, as they stand charged in the indictment, they still instruct me to say that they will no longer contend with the Government in these prosecutions.

ished a purpose to resist the law, that they never did, in fact, knowingly and intentionally, resist it; and that, if they were betrayed into conduct which amounted to a punishable offence, it was attributable solely to a misapprehension, on their part, of what their rights and Judge Andrews concluded with saying, that. obligations were. They were desirous that their he thought the Court would concur with him in position should be perfectly understood; they the opinion that the course now pursued by the did not invoke sympathy because they had vio- defendants was one not unbecoming good citilated the law; the agitation connected with zens, that it would go farther than any pains or these trials has brought to the surface a variety | penalties to sustain the supremacy of law, and of opinions in relation to the course that should that as against such men, under such circumbe pursued when attempts are made to enforce stances, the public justice could be adequately this law. Good men among us differ in opinion vindicated by the infliction of the mildest punas to what the duty of a citizen is in such emer-ishment. gencies. Some counsel a disregard of the law The COURT inquired of the District-Attorney altogether. Some think that the unanimous de- if he had any remarks to make. cision of the Supreme Court of the United States, affirming its constitutionality, carries with it no authority and imposes no obligation to obedience; and some, impelled by stronger sympathies, and to more intense hatred of the law, think that, when the owner of a slave comes into this State, and asserts his right under the Constitution and laws of the United | States to the person and services of a fugitive, he should be resisted, even to the shedding of

blood!!!

Now these defendants have no controversy with those who hold these opinions, but they wish the Court to understand that they are the sentiments of a later school than that in which they were trained. They have no conception of a worse government than that would be,

Judge BELDEN. Nothing, may it please the Court, but to add my voice to that of Judge Andrews that a light punishment may be inflicted.

After Judge BELDEN had concluded, the Court proceeded to pass sentence upon them. In consideration of the facts stated, it sentenced them to pay a fine of $20 each, to pay the costs of prosecution, and to be committed to jail for twenty-four hours.

Court then adjourned until Saturday morning.

The record of the Court is the same in these cases as in the cases of the four sentenced a few days previous on a similar plea, with the following remarkable exception:

:

"And the District-Attorney stipulating that the record in this cause shall not be used to his prejudice in any civil action.”

The following editorial, cut from the Morning Leader, conveys the sentiment which seemed to be general among the friends of the defendants, at the time of these sentences; and so far as it ventures upon a rehearsal of facts, it is believed to make only reliable statements.

SUB-SAINTISM.

HOW IT WAS DONE.

which the Constitution and laws should set aside, and every man should become a law unto himself. They believe it is the duty of every good citizen to submit to the laws of the land; that, when the constitutionality of a national law has been judicially determined by the Supreme Court of the United States (the tribunal created for the very purpose of deciding such questions), its decisions, while they stand, are to be followed by respect and obedience, and they sympathize with no effort that can be made to bring the State Government in conflict with the National Government, or to cause to be deprecated or undervalued the Constitution of the Messrs. Loveland, Wadsworth, and DeWolfe, United States. With all its imperfections the "old friends" of Judge Andrews, humiliwith all its compromises even with the stain ated as they have been by their volunteer adof slavery upon it, they still esteem it a priv-vocate, deserved better treatment and a better ilege to live under such a Constitution, and be- fate. They are substantial men of Lorain, believe that, while the people of a State acknowl- long to the class of hardy pioneers who broke edge its authority and enjoy its benefits, they up the wilderness, built the dwellings, schoolought, in good faith, to carry out even its ob-houses, and churches of the county, and have noxious provisions. These gentlemen are utterly opposed to slavery and to the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law; but they think that bad laws, under our system of government, can be better encountered in a constitutional way than by an armed resistance. These are, in substance, the remarks which I have been requested by the defendants to submit in their behalf; and while they deny that they have knowingly violated the law, while they insist

ever sustained irreproachable characters as good men and good citizens. No fugitive from slavery ever went unfed from their hospitable homes, and their hatred for the Fugitive Slave Act is just as deep seated as their hatred of the accursed institution which Dred Scott Courts and pro-slavery Administrations are laboring with true Algerine ferocity to force upon the Free States and Territories of the Republic. They have homesteads, hard earned and dear to

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