The Martyrdom of Abolitionist Charles Torrey

7. Trial

 TRIAL The Baltimore city jail to which Charles Torrey was taken on June , , was on Madison Street, immediately adjacent to the Maryland Penitentiary. It was, coincidentally, the same jail in which William Lloyd Garrison had been incarcerated for seven weeks in  for having libeled a ship owner in the abolitionist newspaper he was coediting . The jail held approximately eighty men and women, among whom, according to Torrey, were slaves “confined for loving freedom too well” and “free colored persons, shut up in prison to compel them to prove their legal title to be free.” The majority of prisoners were “thieves, murderers, pickpockets, swindlers, men who have brutally beaten their wives, . . . rowdies and loafers from the streetfights , harlots and bawds from the brothels, and a mixed multitude of like criminals.” Torrey’s initial reaction to being incarcerated was to view it as an opportunity to continue his abolitionist activities. He counseled slaves in jail on how to use the Underground Railroad, and consequently “several of the slaves Torrey met in jail later escaped northward .” He also wrote letters, some of which were published, accusing the Baltimore police of illegally profiting from the slave trade. For example: It is very common here for the police and other slave hunting knaves, to play tricks on slave holders. I will give you a few samples. One police firm has in pay, over twenty colored spies here, besides others in Philadelphia and elsewhere. Their business is to inveigle slaves to run away, hide them up, and betray them.—When the master misses his slave, he soon advertises his $ reward; often he applies to this very police firm for aid! In a few days they are ready, of course, to hand over the poor victim of their arts, and pocket the reward, besides getting praise as very vigilant officers! 127 128 | the martyrdom of abolitionist charles torrey Torrey’s second reaction to his arrest was to view it as an opportunity to challenge the constitutional legitimacy of slaveholding in general. He had conceived of this strategy months earlier in regard to the arrest of John Bush, the free black man in Washington who had helped Torrey and Smallwood in their failed attempt to transport a wagonload of slaves north. In January , Torrey had written to Gerrit Smith about the Bush case, recommending that it was “deeply important to carry it to the highest court, on the question of the constitutionality of slavery in the District of Columbia.” Charges against Bush were subsequently dropped, but Torrey regarded his own case as a similar opportunity. It is apparent that Torrey discussed this legal strategy with friends and other abolitionists who supported it. As Torrey summarized : if “it is no crime for a slave to escape if he can, . . . therefore it can be no crime to help him.” The Pennsylvania Freeman wrote that “there is a probability of the case being carried up to the Supreme Court.” Joshua Leavitt, the editor of the Emancipator, editorialized strongly in support of this strategy, adding that “it was suggested by one of the most eminent statesmen and jurists now living, whose soundness of judgment the reader would hardly question on points like this.” The “eminent statesman” was John Quincy Adams, whom Leavitt knew from having helped defend him during his congressional “trial.” Adams apparently suggested that Torrey’s best opportunity for successfully challenging slavery was to have the case appealed to the Supreme Court and thus tried before Chief Justice Roger Taney. Taney was a southerner who had manumitted his own slaves and had ruled for the release of the Amistad slaves two years earlier in the case defended by Adams. Thus, it would have been logical for Adams to have recommended that Torrey follow a similar judicial path. Torrey also had the Amistad case in mind, noting that, “without any exception worth naming, every case carried by the abolitionists into the State or Federal courts, has been ultimately decided in favor of freedom!” Whether Adams was asked to assist in Torrey’s case if it was successfully appealed to the Supreme Court is not known. Torrey’s arrest in Maryland had been based on charges that he had abducted slaves belonging to Bushrod Taylor in Virginia. The trial | 129 governor of Virginia had then sent a requisition to Maryland asking that Torrey be sent to Virginia for trial. The strategy for taking the case to the highest courts was...