Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/139

 countenance any violation of the law. But when the delegation from Racine arrived, the multitude gathered again, battered down the jail door, and liberated the negro, who, put in a wagon and carried off, lifted up his manacled hands and shouted: “Glory! Hallelujah!” the crowd wildly cheering. He was taken to Canada in a lake schooner.

The most conspicuous actor in these proceedings had been Sherman M. Booth. He was selected as the representative victim of the fugitive slave law of 1850, and was arrested upon a warrant issued by the United States Court Commissioner, and a suit was entered against him for damages to the amount of the supposed value of the escaped slave, some two thousand dollars. He was liberated on a writ of habeas corpus granted by Abram D. Smith, one of the Justices of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, on the ground that, in his opinion, the fugitive slave law of 1850 was unconstitutional. The case was taken to the Supreme Court of the State, which, after full argument, unanimously affirmed the order discharging the prisoner. Then the United States District Court took hold of the matter again, and after various proceedings, in which the Supreme Court of Wisconsin constantly held “to the right of the State Court on habeas corpus to pass upon the jurisdiction of the Federal Court,” the matter went to the Supreme Court of the United States, which, by unanimous decision, reversed the judgment of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin. The summary of this decision was that “when a person is in the custody of an officer of the United States, a State may indeed issue a writ of habeas corpus, and the officer holding the person in question in custody must make return to the writ, so far as to show that he holds him under the precept of the United States Court, but no further, and that thereupon the power of the State Court is at an end. Neither the formality nor the validity of