Transcription of Gildersleeve letter regarding the Fugitive Slave Act
Gildersleeve letter, as published in the National Era, Washington, DC, December 1, 1853. Transcribed by the author of this newsletter.
ANOTHER CHAPTER IN THE WILKESBARRE AFFAIR
Judge Grier threatens to hang Mr. Gildersleve (sic)!! - Letter from Mr. Gildersleve, showing sundry reasons against the execution
To the Hon. Judge Grier, of the Supreme Court of the United States:
SIR: In your remarks from the bench, on the hearing of the habeas corpus sued out of the Circuit Court over which you preside, by John Jenkins and others, and also in your printed opinion, you have taken liberties with my name, no less inconsistent with the dignity of your official station, than with truth and justice. The insinuation, equivalent to a positive assertion, that I am an “unprincipled interloper,” does not amount to proof, although proceeding from the lips of a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States.
An affidavit was made by me, upon which a warrant was issued for the arrest of certain slave-catchers. You were pleased to remark, “If this man fails to make out the facts set forth in the warrant of arrest, I will request the prosecuting attorney of Luzerne county to prosecute him for PERJURY.” Perhaps it would still more aid and comfort felons, if you would request all prosecuting attorneys to prosecute all grand jurors for perjury, whenever the facts they had sworn to were disproved on trial; in other words, whenever a person indicted is acquitted on trial, send the jurors who indicted him to the State prison for perjury?
I made an affidavit stating facts according to the best of my knowledge and belief, and which was strictly and literally true. I informed the magistrate that I had not been an eye-witness of the facts stated. Hence there was no fraud practiced or attempted.
In your usual gentlemanly style, you observed, “I know something of the man who made this complaint.” If you knew aught against my veracity or integrity, you kept it to yourself. Perhaps you may know something of me. You may know that I hate oppression; that I believe in the doctrine of the Declaration of Independence; that I do not believe in the power of the United States Government, nor in the power of the combined Governments of the world, rightfully to chattel a single human being; moreover, that I look upon the Fugitive Slave Act as unconstitutional, a foul disgrace to our country, and that I loathe it from my very soul, while you appear to take pride in enforcing it. In your zeal for this despicable act, you thought to intimidate me by sending me a threat, some two years since, that if you could ever get me before you, you would hang me. See the affidavit of Mr. B., annexed. The feat of you and of your threatened halter has not as yet prevented me from expressing my opinions. You have thought proper to punish my audacity by insulting me from the bench. You are indignant at the interference of a tuppenny State magistrate with United States officers. It may be humiliating to you, but such is the system of our Government, that a tuppenny Pennsylvania magistrate has a perfect right to order the arrest not only of a deputy Marshal, but a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, on a criminal charge. Hence it is no matter of surprise that a justice of the peace should order the arrest of official slave-catchers, when they assume the part of brutal and murderous assailants. Am justice of the peace may appear, in the view of a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, a “tuppenny magistrate;” but in the estimation of honorable, virtuous men, the office of a justice is infinitely more honorable than that of a slave-catching commissioner, at any bribe of five dollars a head; the spawn of a United States Judge, not the choice of a free people.
We are left to infer, from your written opinion, that no degree of violence and brutality in catching negroes is culpable or illegal. You seem to have forgotten that the warrant for the arrest of an alleged fugitive is a civil, not a criminal process. The fugitive is not charged with crime. He is merely charged with “owing service.” He is an unfortunate debtor. Can it be that you suppose a sheriff, in executing process in an action of debt, may take an armed posse, and deliberate with his associates on the propriety of shooting the defendant, if they cannot otherwise take him, and that they may violently assault him, and beat him, and fire pistols at him, endangering his life, and all this without showing his warrant?
As to the legality of your proceedings, others more competent must decide. As to the impropriety and indecency of your language and deportment on the bench, no difference of opinion will be entertained by those who understand what is required of the manners of a gentleman, and the unimpassioned impartiality of a judge.
We are officially assured that in the conduct of these deputy marshals towards the alleged fugitive there was “nothing worthy of blame,” except, perhaps, “a want of sufficient courage and perseverance!” That the public may judge what is the style of slave-hunting approved by a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, I refer them to the affidavits of Jacob Kutz, Caspar Fetterly, Henry Patton, and Chas. Gegenheimer, heretofore published.
These affidavits, besides sustaining to the fullest extent the one made by me, disclose a most brutal and murderous assault upon an unfortunate but innocent man. His nominal master gave me a brief history of his character. He said he was honest and faithful; that he had given a boat on the Rappahannock into his charge; that in all the loads of produce which he had disposed of and accounted to him for, he had no reason to believe that he had wronged him out of a shilling. The noble resistance of courage displayed by this man, at the time of his attempted arrest, would have made any white American the pride of his countrymen. He exemplified, to the letter, the sentiment of Patrick Henry - “Give me Liberty, or give me Death.” Your assertion above, that these officers had done “nothing worthy of blame,” and their acts of unfeeling cruelty, exhibit the brutalizing influence of the “Fugitive Slave Act'' on all who stoop to execute it. The claimant of Bill (the name of the alleged fugitive) also told me that Bill’s father was a white man, worth one hundred thousand dollars, and that he had full knowledge of the late treatment of his son at Wilkesbarre.
With the overflowings of parental sympathy, why does he not fly to the aid and succor of his child in his hour of extremity? The sad tale is soon told: this unholy and peculiar institution eats out natural affection.
The outrage at Wilkesbarre, and the indecent and arrogant zeal of a man who gills the high and honorable station of a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States will do something to increase the intense odium with which the Fugitive Slave Act is viewed by the better class of the community. May that odium continue to expand and to gather force until it shall finally render it impossible to execute this execrable act. If this be treason, you are at liberty to make the most of it.