The Underground Railroad eBook

William Still
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,446 pages of information about The Underground Railroad.

The Underground Railroad eBook

William Still
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,446 pages of information about The Underground Railroad.
friends and neighbors.
Such, however, was the excitement, that the public demanded a further examination; he was disinterred again, and the same two eminent physicians made a thorough post-mortem examination, and one of them told the writer that there were not two ounces of contents in his stomach and bowels, and that there was abundant evidence of the presence of arsenic.  His remains were again interred and suffered to remain undisturbed.
The theory of his friends was that he had been suddenly snatched from the platform of the car in the Baltimore Depot, gagged, stripped, and lashed down by the ankles and wrists, and a rope across his abdomen, that his nose had been held by some instrument, and that he was in this situation drenched with arsenic, and puked and purged to death, and that McCreary, or some one for him, had heard Wiley repeat at Stemen’s Run Station, that he was not on the train, conceived the idea of taking his body there and hanging it to a tree to convey the idea that he had committed suicide at that place, and such was the statement published by some of the Maryland newspapers.  His companions said he eat a very hearty supper that evening at Francis S. Cochran’s, which with the other facts that his clothing were not soiled, and his stomach and bowels were empty, goes strongly to substantiate the theory that he had been stripped and foully murdered, as above indicated.  Never was there a more false assertion than that the “broad brimmed Quakers in Pennsylvania were accomplices of McCreary,” as it is well known that opposition to slavery has been a cardinal principle of the Society of Friends for a century.  And that Joseph C. Miller committed suicide because of his being implicated in the kidnapping is a base fabrication.  I knew Joseph C. Miller from boyhood intimately, and I here take pleasure in saying that he was an honest, unassuming man, of good moral character and stern integrity, and would have spurned the idea of any complication, directly or indirectly, with slavery or kidnapping.
It appears his foul murder was not sufficient to satisfy the friends of slavery and kidnapping, but an attempt is now made, after the victim has slumbered near twenty years in the grave, to blast his good name by insinuating that he was a party, or implicated in the vile transactions here narrated.
Rachel remained in jail; Elizabeth, who had been sold to parties in New Orleans, was sent for by Campbell, ample security having been given that she should be returned if proved to be a slave.  Their trial finally came on, and after a long and tedious investigation they were both proven, by hosts of respectable witnesses to be free.  They returned to their mother, in Chester county, who was still living.

    The Grand Jury of Chester county found a true bill against
    McCreary for kidnapping, a requisition was obtained, and B.
    Darlington, Esq., then High Sheriff, proceeded with it to
    Annapolis; but the Governor of Maryland refused to allow
    McCreary to be arrested in that State.

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The Underground Railroad from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.