Read Ebook: The Trial of Reuben Crandall M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers &c. in the District of Columbia with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. Carefully Reported and Compiled from the Written Statements of the by Unknown

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 98 lines and 27611 words, and 2 pages

He read numerous extracts of books to show that similar expressions to those in the libels charged, were not considered blameable if uttered or published at the South; and denied the right of the District Attorney to take particular words, here and there, and hold them up to fix the character of the paper, without regard to the connexion in which they were used; and he said that if Crandall was indictable for the language and meaning of the Anti-Slavery Reporter, then every member of the Colonization Society were liable to indictment.

"The legislative acts which, with a cool atrocity, to be equalled only by the preposterous folly of the claim they set up over the persons of God's creatures, doom to slavery the free African the moment his eyes are opened on the light of heaven, for no other offence than being the child of parents thus doomed before him, can, in the judgment of truth and the estimation of a just posterity, be held inferior in heinousness only to the first act of piracy which made them slaves. It is in vain that we cover up and avoid such reflections. They cling to us, and earth cries shame upon us that their voice has been so long unheeded. The free Lybian, in his scorching deserts, was as much a slave when he rushed, in the wild chase, upon the king of beasts, as is his unhappy offspring before our laws cleave to him. God creates no slaves. The laws of man do oftentimes pervert the best gifts of nature, and wage an impious warfare against her decrees. But you can discover what is of the earth and what is from above. You may take man at his birth, and by an adequate system make him a slave, a brute, a demon. This is man's work. The light of reason, history and philosophy, the voice of nature and religion, the Spirit of God himself, proclaims that the being he created in his own image he must have been created free."

"It can be no less incorrect to apply any arguments drawn from the right of conquest, or the lapse of time, as against the offspring of persons held to involuntary servitude. For neither force nor time has any meaning when applied to a nonentity. He cannot be said to be conquered, who never had the opportunity or means of resistance; nor can time run against one unborn. Those who lean to a contrary doctrine should well consider to what it leads them. For no rule of reason is better received, or clearer, than that force may be always resisted by force; and whatever is thus established, may, at time, be lawfully overthrown. Or, on the other hand, if error is made sacred by its antiquity, there is no absurdity or crime which may not be dug up from its dishonored tomb, and erected into an idol around which its scattered votaries may reassemble."

Mr. Bradley then went on to argue upon the tendency of the libels, and contended that they were not calculated to excite sedition. They are not addressed to the colored people, nor adapted to excite insurrection and revolution among them. They are calm appeals to reason, designed to produce measures to arrest a danger which they think threatens them, in common with their brethren of the South.

The evidence in this case, he contended, afforded not only no proof, but no presumption that he published the libel. The one copy he allowed King to take was not given to be circulated. He had been warned of the danger, and had avowed his opposition to having such papers put in circulation. There could be no pretence that it was given to stir up mischief; and if any one was responsible for any evil effects, supposing any to accrue, it was Mr. King who had shown it, and left it exposed openly in a shop. But he argued that the loan of the paper to King was simple possession--he had afterwards taken it back from the shop, and no evil had been done or intended.

The intent, he said, must be gathered from the circumstance of the publication, and not alone from the libel charged; and he then commented upon the manner in which this paper was taken by Mr. King, and upon his character as a substantial, respectable man, who had just given the prisoner a warning, to show that no presumption could arise of an intent as charged in the indictment. The words "read and circulate," upon which so much stress had been laid, showed no evidence of an intent to publish the pamphlets here, for they were put on two years before in Peekskill; and even the having them brought here was no act of the prisoner's, nor does it appear that he knew they were in the box.

He went at length into an examination of the evidence tending to show Crandall's good character, and the accidents which brought him here and induced him to make it his permanent residence. The trouble and excitement, he said, had not been owing to the prisoner or to any act of his, but was entirely owing to the misapplied zeal of the officers, and to their indiscretion and stupidity. He said he had gone over all the evidence of publication, and it was certain that no other publication had been made by him, for the District Attorney would have brought proof of it; if one had been dropped ten fathoms deep, into the vilest well, some one would have been found to fish it up.

He traced the course of the prisoner from his boyhood to college, and to the study of his profession--from that to his settlement at Peekskill; and urged upon the jury the consideration of his uniformly sustained character, and of his blameless life. He followed him with Mr. Austin's family to this city, and afterwards shewed his course to New York, when the important bundle of abolition tracts was palmed upon him; and then followed him here with those papers, which he did not even open, and of which he could not have known the contents, till he was informed by Mrs. Austin. He had shewn that no Anti-Slavery Society existed where he came from, and that he had never been a member of any such society. He had also shewn his acts, in connection with his good character and principles, when he went to Connecticut to suppress the school founded by Arthur Tappan & Co., which he thought an improper and dangerous institution; and though he has always avowed himself to be opposed to slavery, yet he has always been as firmly opposed to excitement. He had traced him here, and shewn his declarations and principles here, and the business in which he was engaged.

He said he had been satisfied, early in the trial, that there was no ground for the prosecution--that the counsel for the United States had not made out a case which would satisfy themselves or you; but it was necessary to go on with the trial, for the satisfaction of others. The public were anxious to have the whole truth before them; and he was happy to believe that the jury would come to the conclusion that the Government had wholly failed, upon their own evidence, to make out a case which would justify a conviction of the prisoner.

The cause now on trial was the first of the same description which, to his knowledge, had ever been brought up for judicial decision. It was an indictment for a seditious libel at common law. Mr. Coxe here adverted to a portion of our history, during the administration of the elder Adams, when we were threatened with a foreign war and internal commotion, and when it was believed that a resort to unusual means of protection from impending peril was necessary. At that crisis was passed the act of July 14, 1798, commonly called the Sedition Act, by which it was provided that any person guilty of uttering a seditious libel against the Government of the United States, with intent to defame the same and bring it into contempt and disrepute, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand dollars, and by imprisonment not exceeding two years. The act was denounced as tyrannical, oppressive, unconstitutional, and destructive of the liberty of speech and of the press, and it was made one of the principal charges against the party in power of that day, and was the chief means of its overthrow. During the short period of the existence of that odious law, some few prosecutions were instituted under it against obnoxious individuals; and these were the only cases of prosecution for seditious libel that had ever occurred in this country.

In the present case, an attempt was made to apply the well known principles of the common law to the same improper and unconstitutional end. The case was new to our courts, and was of rare occurrence in the courts of England. Without being a prophet or the son of a prophet, Mr. Coxe said he would venture to predict that, if the doctrines which had been urged in behalf of this prosecution, and the proceedings which had been here justified by the District Attorney, should be established as lawful, the seeds will have been sown from which will be reaped, for us and for our children, a harvest of woe and disaster.

He could not, therefore, but deeply feel the share of responsibility which devolved upon him in the management of this case, and in the vindication of the great principles of constitutional liberty in which he had been nurtured and to which he was bound to adhere.

If, upon such a warrant as was issued against this traverser, any individual in this community might be arrested, his papers seized and examined, his most private correspondence exhibited to the public gaze, and if all this proceeding was to be warranted by the laws under which we live, then, gentlemen, said Mr. Coxe, this District is no place for me. He would seek some place where he would be safe from such outrages--some place where the principles of civil liberty are still understood and cherished.

If, upon testimony thus illegally obtained from him, without having been guilty of any overt act against the peace of the community, he could be indicted for sedition, incarcerated for eight months preparatory to a trial, and then be told that for having such publications as the traverser had in his private custody, under his own lock and key, or for loaning one to an intelligent friend, for his single perusal, he should be exposed to conviction and punishment for sedition, then he would, to escape such tyranny, expatriate himself, abandoning a land no longer free.

This illegal process, thus illegally executed, had been justified by the District Attorney, who had avowed himself ready, whenever required, to prove that it was lawful. On the other hand, he, Mr. Coxe, pledged himself, on all occasions, and whenever the question might be presented for argument and decision, to brand it as tyrannical, oppressive, illegal, and unconstitutional.

The next evidence for the prosecution was found in the pamphlets thus stolen, and the possession of them by the traverser was alleged as proof of their publication by him. Against this false and more than inquisitorial doctrine, he solemnly protested. Let the accidental possession of a denounced pamphlet be made proof of its utterance and publication by the possessor, and let the new process of detecting and bringing to light that obnoxious pamphlet be established, and what man, in the whole community, can be safe in the enjoyment of his personal rights? May not any man be subjected to be treated as a felon, upon the instigation of private malice, or party animosity, or religious rancor? How easy would it be to find a magistrate at any time, who, confiding in the learning and experience and official character of the District Attorney, will, at his instance, grant such a search warrant against any individual?--and how easy will it not be to find constables, who, in the execution of it, will raise a hue and cry, and an excitement against the individual at whom the process is levelled?--so that if he escape the tyranny of the law and of the officers of the law, he may, nevertheless, fall a victim to the blind and ignorant violence of popular fury!

Two things, Mr. Coxe said, must combine to bring the traverser, in this case, within the law, if indeed there was any law to meet the case. The publications themselves must be calculated to excite insurrection among the blacks, and contempt of government among the whites; and the mode and manner of the publication must be such as to justify the supposition that the publisher intended to produce this effect.

If both of these facts could not be proved, the prosecution must fail, and the traverser be entitled to a verdict of acquittal. Admitting that the character of the pamphlets was incendiary, and as mischievous in their tendency as the District Attorney may, on this occasion, be pleased to represent them, still it cannot be shown that the traverser was guilty of any injurious or malicious dissemination of them. The loan to Mr. King was the only instance proved of distribution, and could that be considered malicious? Mr. King was admitted to be an intelligent and discreet citizen, without any sympathies with the abolitionists, and he could read one of these pamphlets with as little injury to the public welfare, as could this court and the many individuals to whom the District Attorney had been reading them. If the traverser had been criminal, Mr. Key had been still more so. If Dr. Crandall is punishable for yielding a reluctant and hesitating consent to the request of Mr. King to be allowed to take one of these pamphlets and read it, to what condemnation has Mr. Key subjected himself by forcing these same tracts, and particularly the worst passages he could select from them, upon the attention of so many individuals?

But another ground had been taken against the traverser. He was charged with being a northern man; a native of Connecticut, and a resident of New York. Have we then, said Mr. Coxe, lived to see the day when in a court of justice, in the federal city, under the very eyes of Congress, and of the National Government, it can be urged against an individual arraigned at the criminal bar, as a circumstance of aggravation, or as a just ground for suspicion, that the individual comes from the North or the South, from the East or the West? But we were told, that the Northern men were interlopers and intruders amongst us. He protested against the use of such language, especially in the District of Columbia, which was dependant for its very existence upon the bounty of Congress, and which owed so much to the liberal policy extended to it by Northern men. Mr. C. admitted that there were in the North some vile fanatics, who, under the guise of purity and zeal, had attempted to scatter firebrands amongst us; men who propose to accomplish the worst ends by the most nefarious means; men who, under the professions of christian sympathy and humanity, seek to involve the South in all the accumulated horrors of a servile war. These men were, however, few in number and contemptible in resources. On the other hand, there were men at the South who, for base motives, make themselves auxiliaries to this excitement, and endeavor to alarm and agitate the people of the South by misrepresentations of the general feeling and policy of the people of the North. With neither of these two classes of fanatics had the people of this District any common interest. As a citizen of this District, he protested against making it the arena for the operations of these incendiaries. It was for this jury to resist the first attempt, now made, to render our courts of justice accessory to their designs.

He would demonstrate from the evidence that the traverser had no part in producing the excitement which prevailed in this District during the last summer. Dr. Crandall was not even the innocent cause of it. It was an excitement got up against Crandall, and not by him. When the constables went to his lodgings and office with their warrant, there was no excitement nor commotion among the people. All was calm, and but for the constables and their process, would have remained so. But they published in the streets of Georgetown the nature and object of their errand, and collected a number of individuals who were curious to see the result of this extraordinary search. One of the constables, Jeffers, after leaving the office of the traverser, goes to Linthicum's shop, and there proclaims to the assembly that "they had found more than they expected;" that "their hopes were more than realized." The constable then goes on to proclaim that he had found a large number of incendiary pamphlets, 150 or 160. Then ensued an excitement, and a cry was at once heard, "carry him across the street and hang him to the tree!" Such was the origin of the excitement which pervaded our community, and which the District Attorney lays to the charge of the traverser.

The testimony was silent as to any act of publication by the traverser of more than one of the publications referred to in the indictment, and in that he was shown to have had no improper design. We were told, however, that the possession was proof of criminal design. Was it to be endured that, without authority of law, and contrary to all law, private papers should thus be wrested from the possession of an individual, and then be offered as a proof of malicious intent and malicious publication? In any prosecution for a libel it was necessary to prove a malicious publication. Malice may be inferred to an individual from the simple act of publication. But in cases of seditious libel, it was necessary, in order to infer malice, to prove that the publication was made to such persons as that the public could be injured by it. His case being destitute of such proof, the traverser was entitled to a verdict in his favor. Mr. Coxe went into a minute examination of the testimony to prove that the pamphlets were brought innocently and without intent to circulate them. Those in the box were brought with other papers, and were packed by a lady, for the purpose of wrappers, &c., for plants. The pamphlets given to him in New York, by a person from whom he had purchased a book, he had received without any knowledge of their contents, and the package remained unopened in his trunk until it was taken by the constables. No mischief had been produced; no insurrection raised; no human being injured, except the unfortunate traverser himself, whom, after an incarceration of eight months, the prosecutor wishes you still further to punish. This was a reproach to our community; a burlesque of our courts of justice; it had no support in principle or reason. Was this the boasted intelligence, spirit, and generosity of the South!

From a review of the testimony it would be found that the traverser came into possession of the papers innocently; that he retained them innocently; and that they were never distributed by him.

Mr. Coxe then proceeded to maintain, at length, that, granting the publication, there was nothing in the quotations from the pamphlets incorporated in the indictment from which a criminal intent could be inferred. If there was no criminal matter in the extracts, then there was no crime charged. He went on to prove that they did not contain a single sentiment or expression on the subject of slavery, and its political, moral, and social results, which had not also been used by slaveholders; by the statesmen, and lawyers, and writers of the South.

Mr. Coxe proceeded to compare the language charged as seditious in the indictment, with passages from colonization speeches made by Mr. Key himself; by Mr. Archer, Mr. Custis, Bishop Smith, General Harper; by Patrick Henry, in the Virginia Convention; Mr. Pinckney, in the Legislature of New York; by Mr. Jefferson, in his notes on Virginia; by Judge Tucker, in his notes to Blackstone's Commentaries; and by other distinguished gentlemen at the South.

Neither he, nor the jury, nor the District Attorney, could distinguish the language and sentiment of one of those parties from the other. If there was any difference it was in this, that the northern publications were somewhat more temperate than the others. The controversy which had grown up between the rival Societies for Colonization and Abolition had given birth to this excitement. Which of them was right, or whether they were both right or wrong, was not now a matter in issue; but he would allude to the fact that the sincerity and personal excellence of the abolitionists had been warmly acknowledged by the amiable Secretary of the Colonization Society, and by one of its most distinguished members and friends, Mr. Gerrit Smith.

But the District Attorney denounced the Abolition Societies and Dr. Crandall, whom he alleged to be a member of the American Abolition Society. This assertion was unsupported by testimony, and untrue in fact. One of the constables, indeed, had testified that Crandall, after his arrest, admitted that he was a member of that society; but this was disproved by all the other testimony in the case.

Mr. Coxe, without defending the Abolition Societies, here undertook to prove, from various documentary evidence, that there was, after all, but very little difference between the sentiments and objects of the colonizationists and the abolitionists.

In conclusion, Mr. Coxe remarked, that if any the smallest injury had resulted from the traverser's sojourn in this District, it was not his fault. He was innocently occupied in professional pursuits, and was quietly pursuing the even tenor of his way. Whatever excitement and injury had grown out of his visit here was solely attributable to the illegal course taken by the prosecutor in procuring his arrest and the seizure of his papers, which were harmlessly reposing in his trunk.

With these remarks, and his thanks for the patient hearing afforded him by the jury, Mr. Coxe submitted the case, with entire confidence, to their hands.

The jury retired, and, after a short deliberation, agreed upon a verdict of NOT GUILTY. After which they separated, and returned their verdict into Court the next morning.

Transcriber's Note

Some of the words in this text were verified by referencing the document "The trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D., charged with publishing seditious libels, by circulating the publications of the American Anti-Slavery Society, before the Circuit Court for the District of Columbia, held at Washington, in April, 1836, occupying the court the period of ten days."

The following corrections have been made to this text:

Page 6: Removed stray quote marks

Page 10: Changed choses to chooses

Page 14: Changed posession to possession

Page 18: Added missing end punctuation

Page 19: Changed Crrndall's to Crandall's

Page 23: Changed did'nt to didn't

Page 28: Added missing word 'to'

Page 29: Added missing quote marks

Page 30: Removed stray quote marks

Page 31: Changed desarts to deserts

Page 31: Removed duplicate word 'as'

Page 34: Changed did to didn't

Page 44: Changed posssession to possession

Page 48: Changed gentlemen's to gentleman's

Page 48: Changed Jeffer's to Jeffers'

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet