While the immediate object of this proceeding was to compel Mr. Williamson to produce the bodies of Jane, Daniel, and Isaiah, claimed as slaves in Philadelphia by a person who had voluntarily brought them there, it is impossible to explain the action of the Judge except by his desire to establish the protection of the National Government over slave-masters travelling with their slaves in Free States. The claimant, at the discharge of Mr. Williamson, stated by his counsel that he “sought an adjudication, by the highest judicial tribunal of the country, of the questions, whether Mr. Wheeler was entitled to pass over the soil of Pennsylvania with his property? and whether or not a wrong had been committed in the forcible abduction thereof?”[24] Mr. Williamson was in the Moyamensing Prison from July 27th to November 3, 1855. LAKE SUPERIOR, ON BOARD THE NORTH STAR, Saturday, August 11, 1855. MY DEAR SIR,--With astonishment and indignation I have learned the story of your imprisonment; and now, from this distant retreat, where I am for the moment, make haste to send you my sympathy. From beginning to end, from side to side, and in every aspect, this transaction can be regarded only as a clear, indubitable, and utterly unmitigated outrage. The new-fangled doctrine, that a slave-master can _voluntarily_ import his alleged slave--of course with all the revolting incidents of Slavery--into the Free States, is not more odious than preposterous. It is scouted by reason, and disowned by universal jurisprudence. You were right in disregarding it. In stepping forward to remind persons claimed as slaves on this pretext that all such claim is baseless, you did a good work. It was this knowledge which filled them with confidence to regain their God-given liberty. And for this it appears that you have been brought before a man, “dressed in a little brief authority,” who has cast you into prison. This outrage is rendered more outrageous by the way in which it was done. It was perpetrated through perversion of the great writ of _Habeas Corpus_. This writ of freedom and deliverance, which in England is often styled the Palladium of the Constitution, which is recognized as a distinctive feature of Constitutional Government, which finds no place in despotism, and which is the very master-key appointed to unlock prison-doors and let the oppressed go free, has been made in your case, by a hocus-pocus without precedent, the instrument of imprisonment and oppression.