The "difficulty" about which Harriet expressed so much regret in the
above letter, had reference to a letter supposed to have been written by
her friend Charlotte to Baltimore, about her clothing. It had been
intercepted, and in this way, a clue was obtained by one of the owners
as to how they escaped, who aided them, etc. On the strength of the
information thus obtained, a well-known colored man, named Adams, was
straightway arrested and put in prison at the instance of one of the
owners, and also a suit was at the same time instituted against the Rail
Road Company for damages--by which steps quite a huge excitement was
created in Baltimore. As to the colored man Adams, the prospect looked
simply hopeless. Many hearts were sad in view of the doom which they
feared would fall upon him for obeying a humane impulse (he had put the
girls on the cars). But with the Rail Road Company it was a different
matter; they had money, power, friends, etc., and could defy the courts.
In the course of a few months, when the suit against Adams and the Rail
Road Company came up, the Rail Road Company proved in court, in defense,
that the prosecutor entered the cars in search of his runaway, and went
and spoke to the two young women in "mourning" the day they escaped,
looking expressly for the identical parties, for which he was seeking
damages before the court, and that he declared to the conductor, on
leaving the cars, that the said "two girls in mourning, were not the
ones he was looking after," or in other words, that "neither" belonged
to him. This positive testimony satisfied the jury, and the Rail Road
Company and poor James Adams escaped by the verdict not guilty. The
owner of the lost property had the costs to pay of course, but whether
he was made a wiser or better man by the operation was never
ascertained.