During the spring of 1851, several cases of slave apprehension occurred, the most exciting of which was that of Thomas Sims, claimed in Boston by Mr. James Potter, of Georgia. He was arrested by the City Marshal on the charge of having committed a larceny, and put under guard in the Court House. Charles G. Loring, Robert Rantoul, Jr., and Samuel E. Sewall, lawyers of much ability and men of high social standing, offered their services in defence of the negro. After applying to several judges of the {373} supreme court of the Commonwealth, without success, for a writ of habeas corpus, they finally obtained one from Judge Woodbury, and argued the case before him. The Judge finally refused to interfere with the possession of the negro by the United States Marshal. The United States Commissioner, Mr. George T. Curtis, then heard the case, and issued the certificate for the rendition of the fugitive to his master. In the early morning of the next day, the negro was conducted by three hundred armed policemen to the wharf and placed on board a vessel bound for Savannah. The vessel sailed safely out of port, and the Fugitive Slave Law was, at last, executed in Boston. [Sidenote: Excitement in Boston over the rendition of Sims.] During the trial, and for a week afterward, the city was in a fever of excitement. Meetings of the citizens were held in Tremont Temple and Washington Hall, and on the Common, at which the eloquence of Phillips, Channing, Edmund Quincy, and Horace Mann, and the violent words of Garrison and Parker, stirred the indignation of their hearers and lashed it into an almost rebellious fury. A very large part of the inhabitants felt that a stain had been put upon the city, which must be wiped out by any means necessary to accomplish it. The summer months of 1851 now passed without any notable instances of resistance to the law, and conservative men, of both the North and the South, began to hope that the worst was over, and that the North would acquiesce without further opposition in the execution of the odious Act. [Sidenote: The "Jerry rescue."] In the early autumn, however, violence again appeared. The minor outbreaks were soon overshadowed by an event which occurred at Syracuse, N. Y., in October, 1851. A negro, named Jerry McHenry, who had lived for several years in Syracuse, was suddenly {374} seized and carried before the United States Commissioner. In the course of the hearing he eluded the officer having him in charge, and bounded out of the court-room. He was, however, overtaken and, after a fierce struggle, recaptured and brought back. A little later, a party of highly respectable men, led by Gerrit Smith and the Rev. S. J. May, broke into the court-room, rescued the negro, and smuggled him safely across the Canadian boundary. Eighteen of these gentlemen were indicted and ordered to appear for trial. But the whole community manifested so much active sympathy with them that the matter was quietly dropped.