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.
that they recognized this “voice within” as leading and guiding all men, and they probably meant by it much the same as those differing from them meant by the Third person in their Trinity.  She did not wish, even in appearance, to claim a belief in this voice for her own sect alone.
T. Clarkson Taylor then said, that the time for closing the services had arrived, and in a very few words commended the lesson of his life to those present, after which the meeting dissolved, and the body was carried to the grave-yard in the rear of the meeting-house, and deposited in its last resting-place.

THE TRIAL OF THE CASES, 1848.

    To the Editor of the Commercial: 

Your admirable and interesting sketch of the career of the late Thomas Garrett contains one or two statements, which, according to my recollection of the facts, are not entirely accurate, and are perhaps of sufficient importance to be corrected.
The proceedings in the U.S.  Circuit Court were not public prosecutions or indictments, but civil suits instituted by the owners of the runaway slaves, who employed and paid counsel to conduct them.  An act of Congress, then in force, imposed a penalty of five hundred dollars on any person who should knowingly harbor or conceal a fugitive from labor, to be recovered by and for the benefit of the claimant of such fugitive, in any Court proper to try the same; saving, moreover, to the claimant his right of action for or on account of loss, etc.; thus giving to the slave-owner two cases for action for each fugitive, one of debt for the penalty, and one of trespass for damages.
There were in all seven slaves, only the husband and father of the family being free, who escaped under the friendly help and guidance of Mr. Garrett, five of whom were claimed by E.N.  Turner, and the remaining two by C.T.  Glanding, both claimants being residents of Maryland.
In the suits for the penalties, Turner obtained judgment for twenty-five hundred dollars, and Glanding, one for one thousand dollars.  In these cases the jury could give neither less nor more than the amount of the penalties, on the proper proof being made.  Nor in the trespass case did the jury give “larger damages than were claimed.”  A jury sometimes does queer things, but it cannot make a verdict for a greater sum than the plaintiff demands; in the trespass cases, Glanding had a verdict for one thousand dollars damages, but in Turner’s case only nine hundred dollars were allowed, though the plaintiff sued for twenty-five hundred.
It is hardly true to say that any one of the juries was packed, indeed, it would have been a difficult matter in that day for the Marshal to summon thirty sober, honest, and judicious men, fairly and impartially chosen from the three counties of Delaware, who would have found verdicts
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The Underground Railroad from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.