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Dickson says there was no seal upon the warrant, and spoke about it at the time; and the marshal said it was not necessary. Mitchell says it was the power of attorney, about which this conversation took place, and Jennings says he took the power of attorney out of his coat pocket and handed it to Dickson to read. Here the power of attorney was openly proclaimed as the paper on which they claimed to hold John. Counsel does not say that Dickson means to testify falsely, but his memory is not so good in facts that tend to sustain the government, as those that tend to its defeat. The authority by which John was held, was the joint authority of the power of attorney and of the warrant. Lowe, Jennings, and Mitchell, all held possession. The indictment does not allege that he was rescued from a warrant, but was rescued from Jennings acting under a power of attorney, assisted by other persons.

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The progress of this case has reached a stage in which it becomes my duty and privilege to address you on behalf of the defence. In the discharge of that duty it is also my right, to discuss just such propositions, and in just such a manner as I may think proper. This announcement need create no apprehension, for I have no ambition to play moral heroics, nor do I design to pitch the key of my remarks above the plane, on which courts and juries are obliged to dispose of the every-day affairs of practical life, with which they must deal. And I trust that in bearing and deportment, I may not fall below the gravity of this high occasion. It is no purpose of mine to make this Court Room the scene, and this trial the occasion for the expression of peculiar views and sentiments, any farther than they properly have to do with the issues.

I need spend no declamation on the importance of the case, in any of its aspects. The novelty of the issue, the character of the evidence, the argument of counsel, based on the central idea of property in man, mark this as standing strongly out from all the subject-matters ever before adjudicated in our courts. In the sort of neutral ground that ever stretches from the feet of the advocate as he arises to the act

The defence says the indictment is bad, because it does not aver that John owed service to his master in Kentucky under the laws thereof. But the indictment uses the words of the statute. Is not that sufficient? Such minds as Clay and Webster, in framing the act, did not think the words "under the law thereof” necessary, although they were in the actual case which he must discuss, there is usually of '98.

The jury will be compelled to find that the crowd went to Wellington in defiance of the law, caring nothing for it, to rescue this fugitive, in the midst of his own protestations and against the right of his owner made evident to them. Mr. Bushnell was the principal one in that crowd at Wellington, having induced persons to go there armed, saying to one that he had no business there unless armed. Bushnell is proved to be in the crowd, and there is no contradiction of the fact that Bushnell was in the buggy, being the same buggy in which the negro was placed. It was not Bushnell's horse and buggy, and he therefore must have been selected for the purpose of carrying the negro off. Bushnell was in waiting according to his office, when John was put in the buggy, cracked the whip, and away he went. At Oberlin, this is thought to be a good joke. People around Oberlin think so little of their government and the statutes of the Federal Government, when they interfere with their sympathies with negro women and men, that they consider their violation a good joke. Is it right any people should impugn the laws of the land, knowing no law but their own consciences? This is a serious question. Any jury of undebauched minds will execute this statute in the same faith as in any civil or criminal case under statute law... Judge Bliss spoke two hours and a half.

Mr. RIDDLE addressed the Court and Jury, in substance, as follows:

May it please the Court; Gentlemen of the jury.

found a variety of matters, usually more or less discussed, which I shall pass unnoticed.

There is one subject, however, lying partly in that neutral ground, and in part connected with the gist of the case, upon which I must remark; and in so doing, I may, and probably shall, advance sentiments with which you cannot sympathize; and for the utterance of which, I only ask the toleration which, on all occasions I would extend to you. Whatever diversity of sentiments may exist among us, as citizens of this great free State, there can be no diversity of interests.

You are here merely and purely because you are such citizens. As jurors, you represent the only unqualified democratic element in our government. The path which leads from your citizens' seats to your seats as jurors, is straight and level, or rather you bring your citizens' seats with you, and sit with all your good vigorous sense, experience, feelings, sympathies, hopes, fears, passions, and prejudices as men upon you; yet all chastened and elevated, subdued and toned by the oath which binds you to the duties of this present high calling.

As such citizens and such men only shall I address you.

And now, as to the matter referred to, the socalled dogma of the Higher Law, I am frank to say, gentlemen —and I never had a sentiment I was not ready to avow-I am perfectly frank to declare, that I am a votary of that Higher Law! And I here, in the face of this high tribunal, boldly proclaim, that he who has no higher regard for the right than that which is enforced by the penal code of the country which

is so unfortunate as to number him with its citi- | who, in the observance of one of those old great whose moral sense does not rise above rights, has broken the contravening man enact

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zens,
the coerced observance of the criminal statutes,
is neither a good citizen, nor an honest man.
Right, and its everlasting opposite, Wrong,
existed anterior to the feeble enactments of men,
and will survive their final repeal and must
ever remain Right and Wrong, because they
are such, unchanged and unqualified by your
acts of Congress, and statutes of your Legisla-
tures. Will any mortal say that there can be
no right, no wrong, outside of the U. S. Statutes
at Large? Dare any man arise here and say
in the face of this sun, that the gossamer threads
of human enactments, can break through or
bind down the everlasting pillars of justice, as
set up by the Almighty himself?

It is conceded that the will of one man cannot accomplish this. If one cannot, ten cannot, nor ten thousand; nor can they confer power on any man, or set of men, who can do it.

You may erase, expunge, exile and outlaw this thing, Right, from your Statutes, and denounce it as wrong, and still it is Right. Traduce it till it seems leprous-arraign, condemn, and execute it as felon, and it is still Right, Imperial Right! who will lord it right royally over the consciences of men, and punish their non-observance. And the wrong which you enthrone in the place of banished Right, is still wrong. No matter though it reign till proscription sanctify its ursupation, it is wrong. Jurors may be sworn by its authority, and learned courts so adjudicate as to uphold its supremacy, it is still everlasting wrong, and not Right

Suppose in a given instance the old right has been repealed by one of your statutes, and the wrong enacted; what, then, is to be the conduct of the subject? Can there remain a doubt as to the real course of his action? "But he breaks the law of the land!" exclaims a pious patriot, with horror, "and all for such a flaw as conscience!" A word about that thing of breaking the "law of the land." How do you obey the law? Why, either by doing the things it enjoins, or submitting to the penalty it imposes. Both are equally obedience. Every citizen has this choice held out to him, by every penal statute, and you cannot proclaim a man a bad citizen when he acts conscientiously on his choice, nor say he disobeys your law when he submits to its requirements. Suppose such a man is wrong in his choice, he challenges respect and admiration, and is not amenable to the contumely of those who gibe and jeer him. But if he is right, if the path of conscience in the onward progress of the race, is ultimately recognized as the way of truth and holiness, then, gentlemen, the dungeon to which you would send him becomes a luminous sanctuary, and the grave to which you would consign him, a star-crowned shrine, to which the feet of all coming generations will journey, to gather wisdom and inspiration! And hence the legal rule, while dealing with an alleged offender,

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the statute, as against him, shall receive the narrowest possible construction to exclude him from its penalty. Take the case before you as it would have existed in the absence of your statutes, and state it the most strongly for the Government. This boy John, so poor that he had no father to give him a name, and so abased that he could never be called a man, and in mature years could only graduate an uncle was held to service to John G. Bacon, in Kentucky. Held how? by what contract ? under what obligations, and for what benefit conferred on him? Because he was a slave, is replied. Because he was that thing which all the laws of God declare cannot exist. How came he a slave? What great crime had he com mitted, the adjudged penalty of which was this doom? The malignant genius of his race doomed him at birth- he was born a slave! He belonged not to the God who made him, the father who begot him, or the mother who bore him! but to John G. Bacon, of Mason county, Kentucky. He was a slave because his mother was a slave, and she because her mother was a slave. And her mother was ravished away from her demolished cabin, murdered husband, and slaughtered children, in the wilds of Africa, and did not perish in the horrors of the middle passage. And this felon right to this stolen woman, transmitted unimpaired through her descendants to this, claimant, constituted his sole and exclusive title to the boy John, and he held him in Kentucky by just the same robber hand that the ancestor was held with in Africa, the hour of her capture. And this John, thus held, and under this obligation, with the wrongs of generations burning in his veins

with his face towards the North star, and, as if polarized, fled fled in the night night-frightened, as captives flee; over the snow-whitened earth, under the stars, and, at his approach, the Ohio river congealed, that he might flee.

The claimant pursued him, as the men-stealers pursued his ancestors, with shackles, sixshooters, and knives, and by the same right alone. Overtaking, they added the sneaking artifice of the thief to the violence of the robber, and seized him. As they thus held him in his agony, the defendant and his associates approached; and, knowing John was a slave in Kentucky, and how and by whom he was there held, that he had escaped, and how and for what purpose he was then seized and held; and knowing all this, they put forth their strong hands, and, wrenching John from the grasp of his captors, consigned him to the boundless realm of freedom! This is what they did, and all they did, and in so doing they obeyed the laws of God, as written in revelation, as written in the free creation, and stamped in the nature and instincts of man.

Don't be alarmed, your Honor; I know this case is to be adjudged by none of these princi

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that John was held to service in Kentucky by the laws thereof. It follows the language of the statute, but that is insufficient.

The COURT: The Supreme Court in the U. S. v. Mills, 7 Peters, held, that for misdemeanors it is sufficient to set out the offence in the language of the statute.

Mr. RIDDLE: Very well, the Statute and Constitution must be taken together to form the law in this instance.

ples here. I know that this highest embodied achievement of the Christian civilization of the nineteenth century the fugitive slave act of September 18, 1850-always to be named with profound gratitude and veneration, at one perpendicular sweep, attempts to clear the whole moral decalogue and scatter its divided fragments, and I know I may not ask you to set it aside, or the jury to disregard it. But, warring as it does upon every element of the common law and all primitive notions of right, I have always understood the rule of good I am authorized to demand of you as a court, pleading to be, that where a statute creating a the narrowest construction of this act for Law crime clearly defined it, you should follow its I will not knowingly call it for the very pur-language in an indictment under it; but where pose of excluding this case from its straitened it merely named the offence, the indictment in scope; and I may require at the hands of this apt words must set up the acts and things going jury, a liberal construction of all the conduct to make up the offence; and under that rule of the prisoner, so that his acts may fall outside this indictment is wholly defective. of its penalty. In the defence of such acts, arraigned under such a statute, the arts and finesse of the bar, which, when exerted in favor of flagrant crime, approach chicanery, come to be a sacred host striking for beleaguered innocence; and that stale maxim, that "a man is presumed innocent till proven guilty," that floats an imponderable formula in the legal atmosphere of ordinary cases, arises around such a defendant, an impregnable fortress, until carried by overwhelmning proof; and those intangible entities, called reasonable doubts, assume the form of robed angels bearing assurances of escape and safety. And if, over all, a conviction must take place, let the blow fall in the presence of averted faces; and when the convict stands up for sentence, he occupies a moral level above the tribunal that pronounces judgment, and the judge who dooms is abashed in the presence of the criminal he condemns.

Let not these defendants now or ever be denouced as fanatics, or bad citizens. If it shall ultimately be found that they violated this your statute, they come to suffer its penalties. They have not sought to place themselves beyond your jurisdiction. Your marshal had but to notify them, and lo! they are here, unresistingly to endure if they must.

Yet again, I repeat it, they must be reached only through "the strait and narrow way" of this act of Congress, unlike that other way, and leading to the other place. They are guarded by fiery cherubim, armed with the many-bladed sword of the common law, that flashes every way; and all are to be beaten down in this legal conflict ere they can be reached.

Let us now look directly at the case under the law and testimony. Mr. Riddle here made a point to the Court, on the sufficiency of the indictment. It was therein alleged that John was held to service in Kentucky, but did not state how he was holden, and hence the Court could not judge of the legality of that holding.

In Miller v. McQuerry, 5 McLean, 469, it was decided that the holding to service within the provisions of this slave act, must be by law alone; and hence this indictment should allege

How can the Court learn from this indictment by what bond John was held to service, and short of that knowledge, how can it determine that he was holden as required by this statute ?

This is not the instance of good title defectively stated, but of title upon which they can alone recover not stated at all. If not necessary to allege that John was held to service, I am clearly certain that it is necessary to prove it by evidence to this jury, for it is a question of fact for them under instructions.

Does your honor, or can this jury be presumed to know what are the laws of Kentucky? Suppose, as a historic fact, you take it as true that Kentucky is a slaveholding State, can you go farther and say that certain classes and descriptions of persons are slaves? and that John is of that class and description? I know the U. S. Supreme Court and its judges, as such, will, ex-officio, take notice of all the laws of alĺ the States, and for the amplest reasons. The rule and its reason, are thus stated by Judge McLean in the case just cited by me.

"The Supreme Court and its judges recognize without proof the laws of the several States, and territories. The jurisdiction of that Court and of its members extends throughout the Union. In the respective States they administer the local laws so that the laws of those States come under their special cognizance in acting upon individual rights."

The Supreme Court is bound to take notice of all laws within its territorial jurisdiction, because of that jurisdiction alone. A District Judge by the same rule takes notice of all the laws within its territorial jurisdiction only. How, then, can this Court take notice of the laws of Kentucky, any more than would or could any of the Courts of Ohio?

Suppose this Court will hold as matter of law that Kentucky is a Slave State, it will still, I presume, require proof of the status of this John. I know the witnesses swear John was a slave, but whether he is or not is mixed question of fact and law, not to be proven in that general way. By the witnesses the Government must prove a state of facts which under

and a

he fully awoke to the cries of mercy, bleeding Union; and kindly offered one half of John to whoever would catch and divide him. We are told that on the 4th of Sept. 1858, he duly executed the alleged power of attorney, under which the indictment says John was cap

the Kentucky law, will constitute a slave. The facts as proven are, John's mother was a slave; and he labored, loafed, and lived in some sort without wages. If your Honor knows all the law of Kentucky, can you tell us whether a child born in that State follows the condition of the mother, contrary to the rule of the civil-tured and held, to the redoubtable Anderson ized world? and whether a person receiving no pay is a slave?

We are farther informed in this valuable document from the Grand Jury, that John was owned by John G. Bacon, an allegation to be proven as laid. John G. who appears before us a veritable Scriptural Patriarch, swears in set terms that John was in truth and fact his particular exclusive and unqualified John. He also says that he inherited John from his paternal Bacon, and has living a mother, and five brothers and sisters-which is every word he says about it. Mitchell whose especial mission to Ohio was to be a witness, goes farther and says, that John G. got John on the division of his father's estate, but frankly says he knows nothing of that division, or whether one ever took place, except by rumor. Thus it stands, then, Bacon the elder owned John, and died leaving a widow and six heirs at law, and then the proof stops. If the Court knows all the law of Kentucky, will your Honor have the goodness to inform me if by that law this particular John would fall to this particular John G.? If not, I beg to suggest, that in Kentucky as in Ohio, he fell to the six, who, for aught proven to the contrary, continue to own him as much as men may; and instead of his being the property of John G. as alleged, he owns the valuable interest of one sixth of him only.

This indictment farther says, that John being such slave, and so owing service-what an equitable debt-on the first day of January 1856, fled the ungrateful infidel! He ran away, and good enough for him! On the whole proof I think that allegation true, and I congratulate all hands the Court, the DistrictAttorney, and particularly this naughty John, that this is proven.

He went off with that "high-headed" Dinah, and "pop-eyed Frank," and it seems the infection reached the horses, for two of them went off at the same time. Yet whether John and Frank and Dinah went off with the horses, or whether the horses went off with Dinah, Frank, and John, does not quite appear, and may not be very material. It is very certain they all scampered off together, to the huge grief of John G., the detriment of religion South, the great danger of the Union, and the disgust of the American Eagle generally.

Court adjourned to Tuesday morning.

On resuming the next morning, after recapitulating, Mr. Riddle went on to say. John fled Jan. 1, 1856, and for two years and nine months his bereaved master lay in a trance of stupefied horror, at this act of ingratitude and treason, ere

Jennings, of Mason County, Kentucky, which causes the elephantine proportions of that warthy, to loom ominously on the horizon; yet ere I turn my attention to him and his doings, I have a word to the Court as to the legality of this power of attorney. The 7th section of the Slave Statute provides, that the owner of any escaping slave "his, her, or their agent or attorney, duly authorized by power of attorney in writing, acknowledged and certified under the seal of some legal officer or court of the State or territory, in which the same may be executed; may pursue," and capture such slave, etc.

The power of attorney given in evidence which is alleged to have been acknowledged before Robert A. Cochran, Clerk of the Mason County Court, Kentucky, on its face purports to have been acknowledged before him by his deputy, one Richardson, which is clearly insufficient.

Does this Court know that by the laws of Kentucky, the deputy of the Mason County Court is a legal officer of that State? If so, the acknowledgment should have been before him as such officer in the exercise of such office.

Can it be performed before a legal officer, by his deputy? Clearly not. The laws of the State designate who are legal officers, and this statute designates them and no others, as having this peculiar virtue. In taking this acknowledgment they do not act by virtue of any State law, nor in discharge of any State duty, but wholly and purely by force of this statute, and a deputy under the State law can only act for his principal in the discharge of some State function; he as such deputy can do no act for his State principal under this act; the moment he steps out of the line of his duty as a State official, he ceases to be his deputy at all; and this act authorizes the appointment of no deputies.

Again, the taking of this acknowledgment is purely a judicial act, and cannot be performed by deputy. "The legal officers" of a State sustain the same relation to the statute of 1850, as did the justices of the peace, etc., to the old law of 1798, and, according to Prigg's case, might act under it or not, at their option. They must first decide whether they would train under it, and, having so decided, must then perform a judicial function. In the certificate under consideration it will be seen that the officer says he had personal knowledge, that the John G. Bacon is the veritable John G., etc. Now can it be claimed that the knowledge of the deputy is the knowledge of the principal; or that the chief, in profound ignorance of the fact, can

have this vicarious knowledge through his subordinate?

And let it be borne in mind that this acknowledgment is an act before the clerk, and in no sense the action of the Court of which he is clerk, which could be certified to by a deputy only because it was the act of the Court.

It is, then, with entire confidence that we rely, that the ruling of this court will be, that this power of attorney for these reasons is wholly insufficient; which will dispose of the

case.

high office. He forgets the dignity of his official position, and consents to play pimp and pander to this bawd of American Slavery.

Jennings passes by Marshal Dayton, goes to Columbus, arms a marshal there with a warrant, which is not needed to assist an owner or agent in the caption of his slave, and returns to the precincts of Oberlin. Keep it in mind, that this man Jennings is, for the time being, the owner, and the only man who can capture; and that he sends Lowe to take out the game after the trap has been sprung, himself It is further alleged, Gentlemen, that this the while sitting quietly at his ease, with the Jennings, armed with this power of attorney, power of attorney safe in his inside coat-pocket, pursued this same John into Ohio, and there, in his room at the celebrated Russia House. by virtue of the same instrument and no other And will you mark it well, Gentlemen, that he captured and held this same John. Your this man Jennings, being only an agent and not closest attention to these propositions is re- the actual owner, although clothed by his quired, because each must be proven as laid, power of attorney with full authority to arrest and the Court will tell you if any other man the boy with his own hands, or by posse, in his than Jennings, by any authority, no matter immediate presence, had no power to confer what, captured and held this same John, this upon another, either by parol or writing, the case must fail, no matter what. the defendant authority vested in himself to seize and arrest may have done. Then with a desire only to this boy John. The power to appoint is exhaustarrive at the truth, and do justice between the ed, so soon as it is transferred from the principal parties, and remembering all the time that the to an agent. It cannot be transferred from the Government must beyond doubt establish its agent to another. Jennings, then, Gentlemen side of the case; and not forgetting that it is of the Jury, not attempting himself to authorseeking to enforce a statute made up of unmin-ize Lowe to recapture this slave, but having gled outrages, let us scan the proofs on these points.

Armed with this power of attorney, which, for the purpose of capture and the extradition of John, subrogates Jennings to the rights and powers of John G. Bacon, what does Jennings do? He finds himself on the 8th or 10th of September at Oberlin, with full authority. Mitchell, the witness to identify, is there, and dreaming, unsuspecting John is there. Does he want assistants? Is not Dayton, one of your deputy marshals, there also? Why under the heavens then, if John is to be taken under that power of attorney, is he not then and there seized? Why delay and give him a chance to become alarmed and so escape? Can any mor

tal tell?

Why, plainly enough, Gentlemen of the Jury, because it was never intended to so act under that power of attorney. He sneaks off to Columbus to one of these high and mighty commissioners, appointed to execute this Embodiment of all the Virtues of Christian Civilization in these Latter Days, and there uses his power of attorney for the only purpose for which it was ever given, namely, to swear out a warrant for the seizure of the negro; and this is all the use to which this power of attorney ever was put. Why, what was Lowe there for? If Jennings could call Lowe to his assistance, exercising all the functions of the owner for the time being, he could just as well call any other man or number of men. The United States Marshal by virtue of his warrant has no more power to assist in the arrest of a slave than any other He acts not by virtue, but in spite of his

man.

discharged all the duty for which he came to the State of Ohio, in having sworn out the warrant, put it in Lowe's hands, and having pointed out the game, seats himself complacently in his chair at the Russia House, under the benignant administration of good Mr. Wack, having, as he himself tells us, his power of attorney safely bestowed in his revolver pocket, while Mr. Lowe, by virtue of his useless warrant, arrests the man, and establishes him in his custody.

I do not undertake to say that the agent may not call assistants; but I do say that they, if so called, must act either in his immediate presence, or so near that he, being constructively present, can direct and order their movements in any emergency: but he can never organize a posse, and send them away to make an arrest! any more than could the owner in Kentucky, by parol, organize a band and send them into Ohio and legally recapture an escaped slave.

I know, Gentlemen, that this man Mitchell, sent to Ohio for the express purpose of acting as a witness, says that the power of attorney was actually shown to John! A most gracious favor that, indeed, especially since he tells us in the next breath that he thinks John did n't read it, because he could n't, and had n't time if he could; and Mr. Jennings swears positively that, at the time Mitchell avers he showed it to John (when the arrest was made), it was in his own (Jennings') breast pocket, in the Russia House, at least two miles from the scene of the affecting interview between John and his old friend Mitchell.

But who seizes John?

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