Mr. Sumner occupied several weeks of this summer in a tour to
the West, ascending the Mississippi to St. Paul, and then,
from Detroit, visiting Lake Superior. While on board a steamer
in Lake Superior, he learned by the newspapers that Passmore
Williamson, an excellent citizen of Philadelphia, had been
flung into prison for the offence of reminding a person claimed
as slave, that, being brought to Philadelphia voluntarily by
her pretended master, she was free, according to well-known
principles of jurisprudence. The indignation of Mr. Sumner
found expression in the following letter, which he addressed to
the new victim of Slavery.
This remarkable case will be found in a volume published at
Philadelphia, in 1856, with the following title: “Case of
Passmore Williamson. Report of the Proceedings on the Writ of
Habeas Corpus issued by the Hon. John K. Kane, Judge of the
District Court of the United States for the Eastern District
of Pennsylvania, in the Case of the United States of America
_ex rel._ John H. Wheeler _vs._ Passmore Williamson, including
the several Opinions delivered, and the Arguments of Counsel,
reported by Arthur Cannon, Esq., Phonographer.” From this it
appears that John H. Wheeler, of Virginia, in a petition to
Hon. John K. Kane, Judge of the District Court of the United
States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, dated July 18,
1855, sets forth, that he is “the owner of three persons held
to service or labor by the laws of the State of Virginia, said
persons being respectively named Jane, aged about thirty-five
years, Daniel, aged about twelve years, and Isaiah, aged about
seven years, persons of color, and that they are detained from
the possession of your petitioner by one Passmore Williamson,
resident of the city of Philadelphia, and that they are not
detained for any criminal or supposed criminal matter,” and
asks a writ of _Habeas Corpus_ commanding Mr. Williamson to
bring before the Judge the bodies of the said Jane, Daniel, and
Isaiah. The writ was at once allowed, and the next day followed
by another, to which Mr. Williamson made return, that “the
within named Jane, Daniel, and Isaiah, or by whatsoever names
they may be called, nor either of them, are not now, nor was at
the time of the issuing of said writ or the original writ, or
at any other time, in the custody, power, or possession of, nor
confined nor restrained their liberty by him, the said Passmore
Williamson. Therefore he cannot have the bodies of the said
Jane, Daniel, and Isaiah, or either of them, before your Honor,
as by the said writ he is commanded.”
In the course of the proceedings, Mr. Williamson, who was
Secretary to the Acting Committee of the Pennsylvania Abolition
Society, testified as follows.
“I was informed that three slaves were at Bloodgood’s
Hotel, who wished to assert their right to freedom; I went
to the hotel, and saw a yellow boy on the steps fronting on
Walnut Street; I made inquiry of him, and he stated that
such was the case, but referred me up stairs to one of the
waiters for further information; the latter informed me
that the slaves, with their master, had just gone on board
the steamboat at the end of Walnut Street wharf, for the
purpose of going to New York in the five o’clock line. I
went on board the boat, looked through the cabin, and then
went up on the promenade deck; I saw that man” (_pointing
to Mr. Wheeler_) “sitting sideways on the bench on the
farther side; Jane was sitting next to and three or four
feet from him; the two children were sitting close to her.
I approached her and said, ‘You are the person I am looking
for, I presume’; Wheeler turned towards me and asked what I
wanted with him; I replied, Nothing, that my business was
entirely with this woman; he said, ‘She is my slave, and
anything you have to say to her you can say to me.’ _I then
said to her, ‘You may have been his slave, but you are now
free; he brought you here into Pennsylvania, and you are
now as free as either of us; you cannot be compelled to go
with him, unless you choose; if you wish your liberty, all
you have to do is to walk ashore with your children.’_ Some
five minutes were consumed in conversation with Wheeler,
Jane, and a stranger, when the bell rang, and I told her,
if she wished to be free, she would have to act at once, as
the boat was about starting. She took one of her children
by the hand and attempted to rise from her seat; Wheeler
placed his hands upon her shoulders and prevented her; I
then, for the first time, took hold of her arm and assisted
her to rise; the colored people who had collected around
us seized hold of the two children, and the whole party
commenced a movement towards the head of the stairs leading
to the lower deck, Mr. Wheeler having at the start clinched
Jane, and during the progress repeatedly and earnestly
entreated her to say she wished to stay with him; at the
head of the stairway I took Wheeler by the collar and held
him to one side. The whole company passed down and left
the boat, proceeding peacefully and quietly to Dock and
Front Streets, where Jane and her children, with some of
her friends, entered a carriage and were driven down Front
Street; I returned to my office. _After the colored people
left Dock Street in the carriage, I saw no more of them,
have had no control of them, and do not know where they
are. My whole connection with the affair was this._”
At the conclusion of Mr. Williamson’s cross-examination, he
declared to the Court “that in the proceedings he had not
designed to do violence to any law, but supposed that he had
acted throughout in accordance with the law, and the legal
rights of the respective parties.”
On his return to the writ of _Habeas Corpus_, Mr. Williamson
was held to bail in the sum of $5,000 for perjury, and
subsequently committed, without bail, for contempt,--the
alleged contempt being the declaration that the parties were
never in his custody. In the course of the hearing, the Judge
remarked that “the conduct of those who interfered with Mr.
Wheeler’s rights was a criminal, wanton, and cruel outrage.”
His final decree, July 27, 1855, was as follows: “Let Mr.
Williamson, the respondent, be committed to the custody of the
marshal without bail or mainprise, as for a contempt of the
Court in refusing to answer to the writ of _Habeas Corpus_,
heretofore awarded against him at the relation of Mr. Wheeler.”
On the motion looking to a committal for perjury the Judge
“withheld an expression of opinion,” observing, that, “Mr.
Williamson being under arrest, he may be charged at any time by
the grand jury.”
The respondent attempted to regain his freedom by an
application to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. After solemn
hearing, the application was refused, the Hon. J. S. Black,
afterwards a member of President Buchanan’s cabinet, giving
the opinion of the Court. The State Court was in obvious
sympathy with the National Court, and both were sympathetic
with Slavery. Meanwhile Mr. Williamson continued a prisoner,
until, at last, November 3, 1855, his case was again presented
to the Judge who committed him, when, in reply to formal
interrogatories, he declared: “I did not seek to obey the writ
by producing the persons therein mentioned before the Court,
because I had not, at the time of the service of the writ, the
power over, the custody, or control of them, and therefore it
was impossible for me to do so.… I sought to obey the writ by
answering it truly; the parties not being in my possession or
control, it was impossible for me to obey the writ by producing
them.” The Judge announced the contempt purged and the party
released from custody.
While the immediate object of this proceeding was to compel
Mr. Williamson to produce the bodies of Jane, Daniel, and
Isaiah, claimed as slaves in Philadelphia by a person who had
voluntarily brought them there, it is impossible to explain
the action of the Judge except by his desire to establish
the protection of the National Government over slave-masters
travelling with their slaves in Free States. The claimant, at
the discharge of Mr. Williamson, stated by his counsel that he
“sought an adjudication, by the highest judicial tribunal of
the country, of the questions, whether Mr. Wheeler was entitled
to pass over the soil of Pennsylvania with his property? and
whether or not a wrong had been committed in the forcible
abduction thereof?”[24]
Mr. Williamson was in the Moyamensing Prison from July 27th to
November 3, 1855.
LAKE SUPERIOR, ON BOARD THE NORTH STAR,
Saturday, August 11, 1855.
MY DEAR SIR,--With astonishment and indignation I have learned
the story of your imprisonment; and now, from this distant
retreat, where I am for the moment, make haste to send you my
sympathy.
From beginning to end, from side to side, and in every aspect,
this transaction can be regarded only as a clear, indubitable,
and utterly unmitigated outrage. The new-fangled doctrine, that
a slave-master can _voluntarily_ import his alleged slave--of
course with all the revolting incidents of Slavery--into the Free
States, is not more odious than preposterous. It is scouted by
reason, and disowned by universal jurisprudence. You were right
in disregarding it. In stepping forward to remind persons claimed
as slaves on this pretext that all such claim is baseless, you
did a good work. It was this knowledge which filled them with
confidence to regain their God-given liberty. And for this it
appears that you have been brought before a man, “dressed in a
little brief authority,” who has cast you into prison.
This outrage is rendered more outrageous by the way in which it
was done. It was perpetrated through perversion of the great writ
of _Habeas Corpus_. This writ of freedom and deliverance, which
in England is often styled the Palladium of the Constitution,
which is recognized as a distinctive feature of Constitutional
Government, which finds no place in despotism, and which is the
very master-key appointed to unlock prison-doors and let the
oppressed go free, has been made in your case, by a hocus-pocus
without precedent, the instrument of imprisonment and oppression.
Strange and disgraceful as all this is, it must be considered
the natural fruit of Slavery. Any person, whosoever he may be,
whether simple citizen or magistrate, who undertakes to uphold
this wrong, seems forthwith to lose his reason. He may be just,
humane, and decent in other things, but in the support of Slavery
he becomes unjust, inhuman, and indecent,--often in obvious
unconsciousness of his degradation. The blindness which makes
him insensible to wrong so transcendent naturally makes him
insensible to the lesser wrong by which it is maintained. What
is the writ of _Habeas Corpus_, the trial by jury, the privilege
of debate, or your liberty or mine, in the estimation of a
person who has already screwed himself to the pitch of injustice
necessary for the vindication of an institution which separates
parent and child, which stamps woman as a concubine, which shuts
the gates of knowledge, and which snatches from the weak all the
hard-earned fruits of incessant toil?
But there must be an end to these things; and as Shakespeare
found a jewel in the toad’s head, so do I find a cheering omen
even in the injustice which has made you its victim. There is
an old saying, handed down from distant antiquity, that “whoso
the gods wish to destroy they first make mad”; and I have often
of late been impressed by its truth. The Slave Oligarchy is
mad, and their overflowing madness runs through every agent and
tool. In all that they do--especially in the Fugitive Slave Bill
and its cruel enforcement, the Nebraska Bill and its felonious
administration, and now in the imprisonment of an unoffending
citizen--I rejoice to believe that there is unmistakable evidence
of that madness which precedes a fall. Verily the day is at hand
when returning justice will once more bear sway; then, among the
triumphs of Freedom, will be a reckoning with unjust judges.
Meanwhile accept my congratulations on the portion of
responsibility and dignity which is yours. It is a privilege
to suffer for truth; and I envy not the meanness of that soul
which would hesitate to prefer your place within the stone walls
of a prison to the cushioned bench of the magistrate by whose
irrational and tyrannical edict you have been condemned.
Believe me, my dear Sir, with much regard,
Very faithfully yours,