MY CROOKED TELESCOPE.
In the autumn of 1847, Dr. Robert Mitchell, of Indiana, Pa., was tried
in Pittsburg, in the United States Court, before Judge Grier, for the
crime of harboring fugitive slaves. In an old cabin ten miles from
Indiana, on one of the doctor's farms, some colored men had taken refuge
and worked as harvest hands in the neighborhood. To it came the sheriff
at midnight with a posse, and after as desperate a resistance as unarmed
men could make, two were captured. On one of these was found a note:
"Kill a sheep and give Jerry the half.
ROB'T MITCHELL."
The name of the man who had the note was Jerry. It was addressed to a
farmer who kept sheep for the doctor, so it was conclusive evidence of
the act charged, and the only defense possible was want of knowledge.
There was no proof that Dr. Mitchell knew Jerry to be a slave, none,
surely, that he knew him to be the property of plaintiff, who was bound
to give notice of ownership before he could be entitled to damages from
defendant.
This defense Judge Grier overruled, by deciding that no notice was
required, the law presumed a guilty knowledge on the part of defendant.
Under this ruling Dr. Mitchell was fined $5,000 and the costs, which
were $5,000 additional. His homestead and a magnificent tract of pine
land lying on the northern slope of the Alleghenies, were sold by the
sheriff of Indiana county to pay the penalty of this act of Christian
charity; but the Dr. said earnestly, "I'll do it again, if they take
every dollar I have."
This ruling was alarming, for under it, it was unsafe either to sell or
give food or lodging to a stranger. The alarm was general, and even
pro-slavery men regretted that this necessary act of justice should fall
so heavily on so good and gentle a man. There was much unfavorable
comment, but all in private, for the Pittsburg press quailed before
Judge Grier, and libel laws were the weapon with which he most loved to
defend the dignity of the bench. One editor he had kept in jail three
months and ruined his business. Col. Hiram Kane was a brilliant writer,
a poet and pungent paragraphist, and had at one time criticised some of
Judge Grier's decisions, when by a libel suit the Judge had broken up
his business and kept him in jail eighteen months. Public sentiment was
on Kane's side, and he had an ovation on his release, when he became
city editor of the _Journal_.
There was disappointment that I had not criticised Judge Grier's course
in the first number of the _Visiter_, but this was part of my plan. In
the second number I stated that there had been for a long time a great
legal luminary visible in the Pennsylvania heavens, which had suddenly
disappeared. I had been searching for him for several weeks with the
best telescopes in the city, and had about given him up as a lost star,
when I bethought me of Paddy, who had heated his gun-barrel and bent it
around a tree so that he might be able to shoot around corners. Paddy's
idea was so excellent that I had adopted it and made a crooked
telescope, by which I had found that luminary almost sixty degrees below
our moral horizon. From this I proceeded to the merits of the case.
Judge Grier and Dr. Mitchell were both elders in the Presbyterian
church. The Judge administered to men the eucharist oath to follow
Christ, then usurped the law-making power of the United States to punish
them for obeying one of the plainest precepts of the Master.
The article seemed to throw him into a furious passion. He threatened to
sue Mr. Riddle for having the _Visiter_ printed and sold in his office,
and, as for me, I was to suffer all the pains and penalties which law
and public scorn could inflict. He demanded a satisfactory retraction
and apology as the least atonement he could accept for the insult. These
Mr. Riddle promised in my name, and I did not hesitate to make the
promise good.
My next article was headed "An Apology," and in it I stated the
circumstances which had called it out, and the pleasant prospect of my
being sent to Mount Airy (our county jail) in case this, my apology, was
not satisfactory. I should of course do my best to satisfy his honor,
but in case of failure, should take comfort in the fact that the Mount
would make a good observatory. From that height I should be able to use
my telescope much better than in my present valley of humiliation.
Indeed, the mere prospect had so improved my glass, that I had caught a
new view of our sunken star, and to-day, this dispenser of justice, this
gentleman with the high sense of honor, was a criminal under sentence of
death by the divine law. "He who stealeth a man and selleth him, or if
he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death."
Judge Grier had helped a gang of thieves to steal Jerry, whose ancestors
had been stolen in Africa. The original thief sold all he could
sell--the title of a thief--and as the stream cannot rise above the
fountain, Jerry's master held the same title to him that any man would
to Judge Grier's horse, provided he had stolen it. The purchaser of a
stolen horse acquired no title in him, and the purchaser of a stolen
man acquired no title in him. The man who helped another steal a horse,
was a horse thief, and the man who helped another steal a man, was a man
thief, condemned to death by divine law. Jerry, after having been once
stolen, had recovered possession of himself, and his master and other
thieves had re-stolen him! Judge Grier, with full knowledge of this
fact, had prostituted law for the benefit of the thieves.
Nothing more was heard of a libel suit. Two years after, James McMasters
was sued for harboring a fugitive; was to be tried before Grier, and
spoke to his lawyer about summoning the editor of the _Visiter_. The
attorney exclaimed:
"Oh bring her, by all means! No matter what she knows, or whether she
knows anything; bring her into court, and I'll win the case for you.
Grier is more afraid of her than of the devil."
The editor was summoned, gave testimony, and found Judge Grier a most
courteous and considerate gentleman, with no signs of fear. The case
hung on the question of notice. The Judge reversed his former decision,
and those who were apt to feed beggars, breathed more freely.
A case was tried for the remanding of a slave, and lawyer Snowden
appeared for the master. The _Visiter_ sketched the lawyer as his
client's dog, Towser; a dog of the blood-hound breed, with a brand new
brass collar, running with his nose to the ground, while his owner
clapped his hands and shouted: "Seek him, seek him Towser!"
This caught the fancy of the street boys, who called him, "Towser,
where's your collar?" "Seek him, Towser." He was the last Pittsburg
lawyer who took a case against a slave, and public sentiment had so
advanced that there never afterwards was a fugitive taken out of the
county.