Mr. Lunt—I deny that it was a private warning. It was public, and for proper reasons.
Mr. Dana—It was for private, or secret reasons, not given, not apparent,—some political or governmental terror, known only to the parties. There is no escape from this. The bar saw it. The audience saw it. It is graven with a pen of iron, and laid up in the rock forever!
All evidence of identity having failed, the government is driven to its last shift. Col. Thomas is called in, and he testifies that the agent of Mr. Debree said to him, in the Court-room, when the prisoner was brought in, "That is my boy!" This is hearsay evidence upon hearsay evidence. It is monstrous! Yet on this slender thread of illegal testimony, hung all the evidence of the facts of identity, slavery and escape. If it is enough to prove that the man rescued was the man in custody, and upon whom the Court was sitting in fact, no one denies it. But if it be necessary to show that the man in custody was the man named in the warrant, or that he was a slave, and a fugitive slave, there has been no competent evidence of any of those facts, and no evidence at all but of one of them.
This man was not rescued from the Court. The Court had adjourned. The Marshal had chosen to make the Court-room a slave jail. The offence would have been the same in the eye of the law, if he had been rescued from the hands of the agent having no warrant, in the streets, or in a railroad car.
I have nothing more to submit to the Court on the subject of the law applicable to this case. I will now call your Honor's attention to the facts in proof.
To avoid repetition and confusion, I will call your Honor's attention to single points.
1. Mr. Davis was counsel in the case, and acted as such. Mr. Morton, who knew Shadrach, and to whom Shadrach looked for advice, recommended Mr. Davis to him as counsel. Mr. Riley testifies that Shadrach twice pointed out Mr. Davis to him as one of his counsel, when officially inquired of by Mr. Riley. Mr. King and Mr. List, counsellors of this court, testify that Mr. Davis sat with, consulted with and conversed with the counsel who addressed the court, made a prolonged and careful examination of the papers, and was the first who raised the doubt of their sufficiency. Mr. Sawin, an officer, says he acted as counsel. It is proved that he went into the court room for the purpose of acting as counsel, and did not leave the room or the bar at all (the government will admit, not for more than a minute or two) until the last moment. What other evidence can there be of counsel's authority? It is seldom if ever in writing, but is proved by acts and recognitions. After such evidence of the acts and recognitions of a hasty and troubled forenoon, including the testimony of two of his own officers, I was amazed at the pertinacity of the prosecuting officer in calling Mr. Curtis to prove that Mr. Davis was not counsel. But Mr. Curtis admitted that he knew nothing of the relations between Shadrach and Mr. Davis, that there are often counsel who do not address the court, and that Mr. Davis might have been of such counsel, for aught he knew. And most of the work of counsel was done after Mr. Curtis left.
I think your Honor will find no difficulty in believing that Mr. Davis acted as counsel for Shadrach, and was in attendance for that purpose.
2. To connect Mr. Davis with the rescue, the Government has found it necessary to contend that he left the court room and returned, shortly before the rescue took place. The only witness to this is Prescott; and how does he stand? Prescott was in the entry before the rescue took place, he heard it debated, he saw it through, he gave no notice to any one, but evidently, from the testimony of Hanscom, he sympathized with the rescuers, and expressed his sympathy in a very unguarded manner for a man who was present, in the midst. All that day and the next, with the vanity of a youth who has been the fortunate spectator of the great event of the day, a fire, a hanging, or a murder, he vaunts his connection and sympathy with the rescue. On the third day come the arrests. He finds the Government has learned that he was present. Six months in jail and a thousand dollars fine, is no trifle to a mechanic's apprentice. He becomes alarmed, and offers himself as State's evidence, and becomes a swift, a terrified, and a blinded witness for the Government. He says he was standing in the entry by the recess that leads to the east door and the water-closet. While there, he saw a gentleman come along the entry and go past him into the recess, and he thinks through the east door into the court room. If this was Mr. Davis, he must have gone through that door, for he was in the room and left it again a minute after. This gentleman he is sure was Mr. Davis, although he did not then know him by name and had only seen him once. Nor was there anything then to call his attention to a casual passer by.
Now, may it please your Honor, how long and when was Prescott at that post? According to his own testimony, about two minutes before the rescue began, and as soon as he saw the attempt was serious, he left that place for the stairs. Mr. Davis, then, must have entered the east door one or two minutes before he went out of the west door. Now, Mr. Warren, the Deputy Marshal, testifies that he passed through the entry into this closet, just about two minutes before the rescue, and remembers seeing a young white man standing at the corner. To avoid the effect of this evidence, Prescott is recalled and says he remembers also to have seen a man come out at the east door and go into the closet, at this moment. But here the witness made a mistake. He thought that Mr. Warren went through the east door, but Mr. Warren says that he came along the entry, and had not been in or out of that door. What then is the predicament in which Prescott has involved himself? Three different men must have gone into that recess in the short space of two minutes; two of them at least, must have been in the closet at the same minute; and the east door must have been opened three times upon a knock from without.