John Bradley Winslow

“ The excitement continued and spread to all parts of the city. At five o'clock the delegation from this city arrived at Milwaukee and were escorted to the court house square, where the citizens of Milwaukee were listening to addresses upon the subject matter. The military had been ordered out, but did not appear on the streets. At six o'clock the friends of law and order came to the conclusion that it would be unsafe, as well as eminently wicked, for a human being to be locked up in a jail over the Sabbath against whom no crime had been alleged ”

“ The pioneers of Wisconsin were men of high courage and prompt action. These resolutions prove the fact. None other would attempt to repeal an act of the Congress of the United States after a debate of half an hour at a court house meeting. A committee of one hundred citizens was appointed at the meeting to see that the resolutions were carried out, and the committee departed for Milwaukee by steamboat early in the afternoon. ”

“ Booth again applied for a writ of habeas corpus to the Supreme Court, but it was unanimously denied, not because there had been any change of view in the minds of the justices on the main question, but because, the United States Court having obtained jurisdiction of the case and the prisoner being held by apparently lawful process issued by such Court, (and not by a Court Commissioner) , no other Court should interfere and endeavor to take the decision of the question of jurisdiction away from that Court. ”

“ It is, of itself, a sufficient and conclusive answer; for no one will suppose that a government which was now lasted nearly seventy years, enforcing its laws by its own tribunals and preserving the Union of the States, could have lasted a single year or fulfilled the high trusts committed to it if offenses against its laws could not have been punished without the consent of the State in which the culprit was found. ”

“ When our forefathers constructed the Federal Constitution, they placed therein without debate or serious opposition the following simple provision: "No person held to service or labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." ”

“ In the spring of the year 1852 a negro slave named Glover ran away from his master, one Garland, who resided near St. Louis, and came to Wisconsin. He stopped at Racine and found employment in a mill about four miles from the city. Here he lived until March, 1854. In some manner Garland ascertained his whereabouts and came to Wisconsin early in March to reclaim his property. He made the requisite complaint before the late Winfield Smith, United States Court Commissioner at Milwaukee, and a warrant was issued for the arrest of the negro. ”

“ Were it otherwise, that Court might proceed to indict, convict and punish for common assault, libel, breaches of the peace, and so forth, imprison our citizens at its own will and pleasure, administer the whole common law code of offenses and punishments, from whose judgment there could be no appeal and whose prison doors no earthly power could unlock. ”

“ He argued that the fugitive slave law was unconstitutional on three grounds: (1) because Congress had no power to legislate upon the subject at all, being the ground taken by Judge Smith in his opinion; (2) because it provided that a man might be reduced to a state of slavery without a trial by jury, and (3) because it vested judicial power in Court Commissioners contrary to the terms of the Constitution, which provided for the vesting of such power in certain Courts. The Court affirmed the order of Justice Smith discharging Booth from imprisonment, July 19, 1854. ”

“ Meanwhile the moral sentiment of the North became aroused; the liberty party was organized, the underground railroad flourished, and northern men and women refused to act as slave-catchers, or assist in perpetuating the crime of slavery. ”

“ Instead of settling the matter, it simply added fuel to the flame of excitement in the North, and nowhere in the West perhaps did the excitement run higher than in Wisconsin. The immigration into this State from the New England States and New York was very heavy during the early fifties, and the immigrants brought with them their love of freedom and hatred of slave-catchers. On the 19th of May, 1848, Sherman M. Booth arrived at Milwaukee. ”

“ Every man was an orator, and resolutions of mighty sound and startling import were easily drawn and enthusiastically passed. So in the early morning of Saturday, March 11th, the court house bell at Racine rang vociferously and the people hurried to the temple of justice. ”