As to the schooner being provisioned for a month, the bill of the provisions on board, purchased in Washington, was produced on the trial, and they were found to amount to three bushels of meal, two hundred and six pounds of pork, and fifteen gallons of molasses, which, with a barrel of bread, purchased in Alexandria, would make rather a short month's supply for seventy-nine persons!
It was also proved, by the government witnesses, that the Pearl was a mere bay-craft, not fit to go to sea; which did not agree very well with the idea held out by the District Attorney, that I intended to run these negroes off to the West Indies, and to sell them there. But, to make up for these deficiencies, Williams, who acted as the leader of the steamer expedition, swore that I had said, while on board, that if I had got off with the negroes I should have made an independent fortune; but on the next trial he could not say whether it was I who told him so, or whether somebody else told him that I had said so. Orme and Craig, with whom I principally conversed, and who went into long details, recollected nothing of the sort; and it is very certain that, as there was no foundation for it, and no motive for such a statement on my part, I never made it. Williams, perhaps, had heard somebody guess that, if I had got off, I had slaves enough to make me independent; and that guess of somebody else he perhaps remembered, or seemed to remember, as something said by me, or reported to have been said by me; and such often, in cases producing great public excitement, is the sort of evidence upon which men's lives or liberty is sworn away. The idea, however, of an intention to run the negroes off for sale, seemed principally to rest on the testimony of a certain Captain Baker, who had navigated the steamer by which we were captured at the mouth of the Potomac, and who saw, as he was crossing over to Coan river for wood, a long, black, suspicious-looking brig, with her sails loose, lying at anchor under Point Lookout, about three miles from our vessel. This was proved, by other witnesses, to be a very common place of anchorage; in fact, that it was common for vessels waiting for the wind, or otherwise, to anchor anywhere along the shores of the bay. But Captain Baker thought otherwise; and he and the District Attorney wished the jury to infer that this brig seen by him under Point Lookout was a piratical craft, lying ready to receive the negroes on board, and to carry them off to Cuba!
Besides Houver, Williams, Orme, Craig and Baker, another witness was called to testify as to the sale of the wood, and my having been in Washington the previous summer. Many questions as to evidence arose, and the examination of these witnesses consumed about two days and a half.
In opening the defence, Mr. Mann commenced with some remarks on the peculiarity of his position, growing out of the unexpected urgency with which the case had been pushed to a trial, and the public excitement which had been produced by it. He also alluded to the hardship of finding against me such a multiplicity of indictments,—for what individual, however innocent, could stand up against such an accumulated series of prosecutions, backed by all the force of the nation? Some observations on the costs thus unnecessarily accumulated, and, in particular, on the District Attorney's ten-dollar fees, produced a great excitement, and loud denials on the part of that officer.
Mr. Mann then proceeded to remark that, in all criminal trials which he had ever before attended or heard of, the prosecuting officer had stated and produced to the jury, in his opening, the law alleged to be violated. As the District Attorney had done nothing of that sort, he must endeavor to do it for him. Mr. Mann then proceeded to call the attention of the jury to the two laws already quoted, upon which the two sets of indictments were founded. Of both these acts charged against me—the stealing of Houver's slaves, and the helping them to escape from their master—I could not be guilty. The real question in this case was, Which had I done?
To make the act stealing, there must have been—so Mr. Mann maintained—a taking lucri causa, as the lawyers say; that is, a design on my part to appropriate these slaves to my own use, as my own property. If the object was merely to help them to escape to a free state, then the case plainly came under the other statute.
In going on to show how likely it was that the persons on board the Pearl might have desired and sought to escape, independently of any solicitations or suggestions on my part, Mr. Mann alluded to the meeting in honor of the French revolution, already mentioned, held the very night of the arrival of the Pearl at Washington. As he was proceeding to read certain extracts from the speech of Senator Foote on that occasion, already quoted, and well calculated, as he suggested, to put ideas of freedom and emancipation into the heads of the slaves, he was suddenly interrupted by the judge, when the following curious dialogue occurred:
"Judge Crawford.—A certain latitude is to be allowed to counsel in this case; but I cannot permit any harangue against slavery to be delivered here.
"Carlisle (rising suddenly and stepping forward).—I am sure your honor must be laboring under some strange misapprehension. Born and bred and expecting to live and die in a slave-holding community, and entertaining no ideas different from those, which commonly prevail here, I have watched the course of my associate's argument with the closest attention. The point he is making, I am sure, is most pertinent to the case,—a point it would be cowardice in the prisoner's counsel not to make; and I must beg your honor to deliberate well before you undertake to stop the mouths of counsel, and to take care that you have full constitutional warrant for doing so.
"Judge Crawford.—I can't permit an harangue against slavery."