Throughout Wisconsin the rescue was approved by the newspapers and
public gatherings. Sympathetic meetings were also held in other States,
at which resolutions applauding the action of Booth and his friends, and
declaring the slave catching law unconstitutional, were passed with much
enthusiasm. There was also held at Milwaukee, in April, a notable State
convention, with delegates from all of the settled parts of the
commonwealth; this convention declared the law unconstitutional, and
formed a State league for furnishing aid and sympathy to the Glover
rescuers.
In 1857, as a result of the Glover affair, the Wisconsin legislature
passed an act making it a duty of district attorneys in each county "to
use all lawful means to protect, defend, and procure to be discharged
... every person arrested or claimed as a fugitive slave," and throwing
around the poor fellow every possible safeguard. Such was Wisconsin's
final protest against the iniquity of the Fugitive Slave Law.
Naturally, Booth had been looked upon by the United States marshal as
the chief abettor of the riot. He was promptly arrested for violating a
federal law by aiding in the escape of a slave; but the State supreme
court promptly discharged him on a writ of _habeas corpus_. Thereupon he
was brought before the federal court, but again the State court
interfered in his favor, because of a technical irregularity.
On the first of these occasions, the State court issued a very
remarkable decision upon State rights, that attracted national attention
at a time when this question was violently agitating the public mind. It
declared, after a clear, logical statement of the case, that the
Fugitive Slave Law was "unconstitutional and void" because it conferred
judicial power upon mere court commissioners, and deprived the accused
negro of the right of trial by jury. One of the justices of the court,
in an individual opinion, went still further: he held that Congress had
no power to legislate upon this subject; that "the States will never
quietly submit to be disrobed of their sovereignty" by "national
functionaries"; that the police power rested in the State itself, which
would not "succumb, paralyzed and aghast, before the process of an
officer unknown to the constitution, and irresponsible to its
sanctions"; and that so long as he remained a judge, Wisconsin would
meet such attempts with "stern remonstrance and resistance."
The federal court reversed this action, and again arrested Booth in
1860, but he was soon pardoned by the President, and met with no further
trouble on account of the Glover affair.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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