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One: Rescuing Joshua Glover
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o n e p Rescuing Joshua Glover Again I say, let the people abandon their state courts and consent to their being disarmed of the writ of Habeas Corpus, and their liberties are gone.—Not only the liberty of the citizen, but the sovereignty of the state require a firm resistance to this monstrous assumption of power on the part of the federal courts. —Milwaukee Sentinel, March , IT WAS Friday night, March , . Seven men stood outside Joshua Glover’s cabin. They had departed from the port city of Racine in two wagons just before dusk to make the four-mile journey to Glover’s home. The last hundred yards or so they walked, ensuring a stealthy approach. Among the men was Benammi Garland, of St. Louis, the man who claimed Joshua Glover as a fugitive slave owing him service under the laws of Missouri. Garland had made that claim a month earlier at the court of common pleas in St. Louis. There Garland made proof of his ownership of a slave named Joshua Glover and of Glover’s escape in . Garland further swore that he had credible information that his slave was living close to the town of Racine in Wisconsin. How he learned this is something of a mystery. Wisconsin did not have a reputation as a state friendly to the interests of slaveholders. Some suggested later that one of Glover’s friends—a mulatto named Nelson Turner with freedom papers from Natchez, Mississippi— played the turncoat. Whatever evidence Garland had was enough to satisfy the St. Louis court, which issued him a certificate of removal. The certificate licensed the removal of a fugitive slave from one state to another. It gave Garland the authority to take hold of the fugitive and 1 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. present him before a federal judge or commissioner in Wisconsin. If the proof satisfied the judicial officer—and the threshold for evidence was notoriously low—the fugitive could be removed from Wisconsin to the slave state of Missouri. This was all the legal process needed under the Fugitive Slave Act of , but Garland assiduously attended to legal detail. He took the additional step of securing a warrant for Glover’s arrest from Judge Andrew Miller of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin . Strictly speaking, the warrant was superfluous. But Garland now had direct authority from a federal court in a free state.1 Armed with certi ficate and warrant and aided by two deputy U.S. marshals and four assistants , Garland was ready to apprehend his fugitive slave. Glover lived in a cabin owned by Duncan Sinclair, a local businessman who employed Glover at his sawmill.2 Glover was apparently something of a skilled carpenter, for he showed up from time to time in Racine with handcrafted goods for sale. On March , Glover was inside with two friends, William Alby and Nelson Turner, playing a game of cards when Garland’s party knocked. Glover was suspicious. The U.S. marshals had been there the day before but, finding no one home, had left. A black woman residing there had fled, thinking the men were after her. Glover may not have known any of this, but he undoubtedly knew that slave hunters were abroad in the countryside. Glover told his friends not to answer until they knew who it was. But Turner unbolted the door.3 Garland and the marshals rushed in. Glover surely knew their purpose even without the formality of presenting the warrant. He did not give up his freedom willingly. One of the party pressed a pistol to Glover’s head, and when Glover pushed it away, Deputy Marshal John Kearney struck him with a cudgel. The blow knocked Glover to the floor, where three men attempted to manacle him, but Glover was strong enough to ward them all off. The others in the arresting party assisted and finally succeeded in manacling Glover. If one is to believe the report of the Racine Advocate , he then broke these irons from his wrists. During the fray, William Alby escaped through the window and made haste for Racine, where he tipped off abolitionists about the arrest. The arresting party finally subdued Glover and put him, manacled and bleeding from the...