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In 1852, Joshua Glover escaped from slavery in Missouri, and he made his way to Racine, Wisconsin via the Underground Railroad. His subsequent arrest and jail break at the hands of a mob of thousands of Wisconsin Abolitionists and the trial of his rescuer would capture national attention and result in Wisconsin Court deciding that the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was unconstitutional.
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 required that law enforcement officials arrest anyone suspected of being a runaway slave. All that was needed to arrest someone was a claim of ownership, and the suspected runaway slave had no right to a trial. In addition, anyone who helped a runaway slave could be fined and imprisoned. In the words of James Angove, who will have a role later in our story:
I … did not approve of the Fugitive Slave law. The Southerners had the law so fixed that Northern people were obliged to take and keep slaves flying from bondage, until their masters would come and claim them. In other words, Wisconsin people were supposed to furnish a pen for their cattle as long as they pleased, for, according to their theory and the theory of all who advocated slavery, slaves were property to be bought and sold, and were therefore cattle.
Two years after Joshua Glover escaped, his owner, Bennami (also cited as Benammi) Garland and a posse including at least one US Marshal located Glover in Racine, where he had been working at a sawmill. Garland obtained a process in the US District Court under the Fugitive Slave Act, and arrested Glover. The arrest was violent and bloody, with Glover being knocked down with a club and having a pistol leveled at this head. The posse loaded Glover into a wagon and headed to the Milwaukee jail.
The mayor of Racine telegraphed Sherman Booth, an abolitionist and newspaper editor in Milwaukee, to alert him to Glover’s arrest and transfer to Milwaukee. Sherman rode on horseback through the city alerting people that a mass meeting was to be held at the jail. One of the handbills circulated that day asked “Shall a man be dragged back to Slavery from our Free Soil, without an open trial of his right to Liberty?"
By afternoon, Booth and crowd of thousands of people, including James Angove, gathered at the jail where Joshua Glover was being held. The crowd adopted a resolution affirming a slave’s right to a writ of habeas corpus and a trial by jury, and a local judge issued a writ. But the federal officers refused to recognize the writ’s validity, and the jailer refused the crowd’s demand for keys to the jail. James Angove spotted a heavy beam at a nearby construction site, saying “Here’s a good enough key!” He and other men used the beam as a battering ram to break into the jail and free Glover. Abolitionists helped Glover make his way to Canada.
Glover’s escape was followed by court proceedings that would go on for years. The Racine County Sherriff arrested Bennami Garland and the other men who aided in capturing Glover on charges of assault and battery of Glover. Garland was released on a writ of habeas corpus.
Sherman Booth was arrested for violating the federal Fugitive Slave Law. Booth, in defending himself, said:
I am frank to say, and the prosecution may make the most of it--that I sympathize with the rescuers of Glover and rejoice at his escape. I rejoice that, in the first attempt of the slave-hunters to convert our jail into a slave-pen and our citizens into slave-catchers, they have signally failed, and that it has been decided by the spontaneous uprising and sovereign voice of the people, that no human being can be dragged into bondage from Milwaukee. And I am bold to say that, rather than have the great constitutional rights and safeguards of the people--the writ of habeas corpus and the right of trial by jury--stricken down by this fugitive law, I would prefer to see every federal officer in Wisconsin hanged on a gallows fifty cubits higher than Haman's."
The grand jury indicted Booth, and he appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court for a writ of habeas corpus. The state Supreme Court decided that the federal government could not enact legislation that overrode the state’s own laws, becoming the only state court that would declare the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional. From the opinion:
[States] will never consent, that a slave-owner, his agent, or an officer of the United States, armed with process to arrest a fugitive from service, is clothed with entire immunity from state authority; to commit whatever crime or outrage against the laws of the state; that their own high prerogative writ of habeas corpus shall be annulled, their authority defied, their officers resisted, the process of their own courts contemned, their territory invaded by federal force, the houses of their citizens searched, the sanctuary or their homes invaded, their streets and public places made the scenes of tumultuous and armed violence, and state sovereignty succumb--paralyzed and aghast--before the process of an officer unknown to the constitution and irresponsible to its sanctions. At least, such shall not become the degradation of Wisconsin, without meeting as stern remonstrance and resistance as I may be able to interpose, so long as her people impose upon me the duty of guarding their rights and liberties, and maintaining the dignity and sovereignty of their state."
After a delay of four years due to the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s refusal to transmit its decision to the US Supreme Court, the US Supreme Court overruled the state court, holding that the states do not have the power to overturn federal court decisions. Sherman Booth was retried, found guilty of violation of the Fugitive Slave Act, and imprisoned in the federal custom house in Milwaukee.
Bennami Garland sued Sherman Booth for the value of Joshua Glover, and was awarded $1,000, the value of a slave as determined by the 1850 act.
President James Buchanan pardoned Sherman Booth in 1861, and Congress repealed the Fugitive Slave Act in 1864.
Joshua Glover lived in Canada until his death in 1888.
~ ~ ~
Finding Freedom, a book about Joshua Glover
“Rescue of Joshua Glover, a Runaway Slave”
“Joshua Glover’s 1854 Journey on the Underground Railroad”
“Helped Save Glover,” James Angove’s recollections of the rescue
Wiki article on the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
Wiki article on Joshua Glover
Wiki article on Sherman Booth
Wiki article on Ableman v. Booth