Contempt was not the only hardship that the abolitionist had to face when he admitted the fleeing black man within his door, but he braved also the existing laws, and was sometimes compelled to suffer the consequences for disregarding the slaveholder's claim of ownership. In 1842 the prosecution of John Van Zandt, of Hamilton County, Ohio, was begun for attempting to aid nine slaves to escape. The case was tried first in the Circuit Court of the United States, and then taken by appeal to the Supreme Court. The suits were not concluded when the defendant died in May, 1847. The death of the plaintiff soon after left the case to be settled by administrators, who agreed that the costs, amounting to one thousand dollars, should be paid from the possessions of the defendant.[308] The judgments against Van Zandt under the Fugitive Slave Law amounted to seventeen hundred dollars.[309] In 1847 several members of a crowd that was instrumental in preventing the seizure of a colored family by the name of Crosswhite, at Marshall, Michigan, were indicted under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793. Two trials followed, and at the second trial three persons were convicted, the verdict against them amounting, with expenses and costs, to six thousand dollars.[310] In 1848 Daniel Kauffman, of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, sheltered a family of thirteen slaves in his barn, and gave them transportation northward. He was tried, and sentenced to pay two thousand dollars in fine and costs. Although this decision was reversed by the United States Supreme Court, a new suit was instituted in the Circuit Court of the United States and a judgment was rendered against Kauffman amounting with costs to more than four thousand dollars. This sum was paid, in large part if not altogether, by contributions.[311] In 1854 Rush R. Sloane, a lawyer of Sandusky, Ohio, was tried for enabling seven fugitives to escape after arrest by their pursuers. The two claimants of the slaves instituted suit, but one only obtained a judgment, which amounted to three thousand dollars and costs.[312] The arrest of the fugitive, Anthony Burns, in Boston, in the same year, was the occasion for indignation meetings at Faneuil and Meionaon Halls, which terminated in an attempt to rescue the unfortunate negro. Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips and T. W. Higginson took a conspicuous part in these proceedings, and were indicted with others for riot. When the first case was taken up the counsel for the defence made a motion that the indictment be quashed. This was sustained by the court, and the affair ended by all the cases being dismissed.[313] [308] Letter of N. L. Van Sandt, Clarinda, Iowa. (Mr. N. L. Van Sandt is the son of John Van Zandt.) See also Wilson's _Rise and Fall of the Slave Power_, Vol. I, pp. 475, 476; T. R. Cobb, _Historical Sketches of Slavery_, p. 207; M. G. McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, p. 42. [309] See pp. 274, 275, Chapter IX.