The Trial of Theodore Parker: For the "Misdemeanor" of a Speech in Faneuil Hall against Kidnapping, before the Circuit Court of the United States, at Boston, April 3, 1855, with the DefenceParker, Theodore
Religion
The Trial of Theodore Parker: For the "Misdemeanor" of a Speech in Faneuil Hall against Kidnapping, before the Circuit Court of the United States, at Boston, April 3, 1855, with the Defence
Parker, Theodore
Antislavery movements -- Massachusetts -- Boston; United States -- Fugitive slave law (1850)
"An application [for a warrant to arrest Mr. Craft] had
already been made to the judges [Messrs. Woodbury and
Sprague] privately ... they could not grant a warrant on
account of the pendency of an important Patent Cause then on
trial before a jury." "To this I replied, that ... the
ordinary business of the Court ought to give way for a
sufficient length of time, to enable the judges to receive
this application and to hear the case." "On a private
intimation to the presiding judge of our desire to confer
with him [the desire of the kidnapping commissioners, Mr.
B.F. Hallett, Mr. Edward G. Loring, Mr. C.L. Woodbury, and
Mr. G.T. Curtis] the jury were dismissed at _an earlier hour
than usual, ... and every person present except the
Marshal's deputies left the room, and the doors were
closed_." "The learned Judge said ... that he would attend
at half past eight the next morning, to grant the warrant."
"A process was placed in the hands of the Marshal ... in the
execution of which he might be called upon to _break open
dwelling-houses, and perhaps take life_, by quelling
resistance, actual or _threatened_." "I devoted at once a
good deal of time to the necessary investigations of the
subject." "There is a great deal of legislation needed to
make the general government independent of State control,"
says this "Expounder of the Constitution," "and independent
of the power of mobs, whenever and wherever its measures
chance to be unpopular." "The office of United States
Marshal is by no means organized and fortified by
legislation as it should be to encounter popular
disturbance."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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