Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/138

 circumstances. The day's work done, Glover was in his cabin, not far from Racine, amusing himself with two other colored men, when, about dusk of the evening, two United States Deputy Marshals, with four assistants and the claimant from Missouri, came in carriages from Racine and knocked at the door of the cottage. The door being opened, one of the Deputy Marshals rushed forward and struck Glover down with a bludgeon. Although Glover recovered himself and struggled fiercely against being manacled, the seven white men finally overcame him, thrust him, wounded and bleeding, into a wagon, and thus carried him to Milwaukee, where, early the next morning, he was locked up in jail. When, the same morning, this occurrence became known in Racine, the people rushed together on the Court House Square—the largest concourse ever seen in that town, denouncing the “kidnapping of Joshua Glover, a faithful laborer and an honest man,” demanding for him a “fair and impartial trial by jury,” and “declaring the slave-catching law of 1850 disgraceful and demanding that it should be repealed.” It was also resolved to send a delegation to Milwaukee to see the resolution carried into effect as much as it could be, and one hundred citizens went on that errand. The capture had been telegraphed to Sherman M. Booth, the editor of an anti-slavery paper in Milwaukee. Mr. Booth, a fierce-looking man with flowing black hair, a long and bushy black beard, and dark glowing eyes, mounted a horse, and riding through the streets of the town, he stopped at every corner, loudly shouting: “Freemen! To the rescue! Slave-catchers are in our midst! Be at the Court House at two o'clock!” More than five thousand men and women assembled on this summons. The meeting was addressed by some of the foremost citizens. A committee of vigilance and protection was named to see that Glover should have a fair trial. The committee agreed not to