Page:A Historic Judicial Controversy and Some Reflections (Gregory, 1913).djvu/3

Rh, and afterwards one of the leading lawyers of that city. I remember him well in later years; a man of medium height, with no little energy of manner, speaking in an earnest, florid and rhetorical style and with much fluency.

Mr. Smith issued a warrant for the arrest of Glover, and a deputy marshal, with the slave owner and such assistance as he deemed necessary, proceeded to Racine, forcibly entered the little cabin where Glover lived, knocked him down, and carried him, bound and handcuffed, in a wagon to Milwaukee, where he was lodged in jail.

This proceeding created great excitement in Racine as soon as it became known; a public meeting in the court-house was called, and Saturday morning, March, 11th, the bell in that edifice rang loudly to summon the freemen of that little community to a new struggle for liberty.

The people gathered in great numbers; impassioned addresses were made and fiery resolutions were adopted. By these resolutions the arrest of Glover was denounced as an outrage and his trial by a jury was demanded; it was also resolved that the citizens of Racine would go in person to secure his release; and that, "as the Senate of the United States has repealed all compromises heretofore adopted by Congress, we, as citizens of Wisconsin, are justified in declaring, and do hereby declare, the slave catching law of 1850 disgraceful and also repealed."

A committee of one hundred was appointed to see that the resolutions were carried out, and the committee took steamboat for Milwaukee in the afternoon-of that day.

The news of Glover's arrest had reached Milwaukee early in the morning by telegraph. At that time Sherman M. Booth had lived in Milwaukee about six years, having come there from Connecticut where he had carried on an active propaganda for the abolition of slavery. He was, as earnest men are apt to be in a great cause, zealous to the point of fanaticism. He had purchased an interest in an anti-slavery paper on coming to Milwaukee, and became its editor, and in it insisted, in season and out of season, that slavery must be abolished. I never knew him but I remember seeing him and hearing him speak when he was an old man, and noting then his power of invective and biting sarcasm. When he heard of Glover's arrest he at once consulted with General James H. Paine, then a prominent lawyer, who, with his son Byron, then about twenty-six years of age, was practicing in Milwaukee. On their advice a writ of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum was sued out before Judge Charles E. Jenkins of the County Court of Milwaukee