The next step was to claim her freedom. She appears to have gone back to Belmonti, but within a very few days, if not immediately, Madame Schuber and a certain Mrs. White—who does not become prominent—followed down to the cabaret. Mrs. White went out somewhere on the premises, found Salome at work, and remained with her, while Madame Schuber confronted Belmonti, and, revealing Salome's identity and its proofs, demanded her instant release.
Belmonti refused to let her go. But while doing so he admitted his belief that she might be of pure white blood and of right entitled to freedom. He confessed having gone back to John F. Müller[28] soon after buying her and proposing to set her free; but Müller, he said, had replied that in such a case the law required her to leave the country. Thereupon Belmonti had demanded that the sale be rescinded, saying: "I have paid you my money for her."
"But," said Müller, "I did not sell her to you as a slave. She is as white as you or I, and neither of us can hold her if she chooses to go away."
Such at least was Belmonti's confession, yet he was as far from consenting to let his captive go after this confession was made as he had been before. He seems actually to have kept her for a while; but at length she went boldly to Schuber's house, became one of his household, and with his advice and aid asserted her intention to establish her freedom by an appeal to law. Belmonti replied with threats of public imprisonment, the chain-gang, and the auctioneer's block.
Salome, or Sally, for that seems to be the nickname by which her kindred remembered her, was never to be sold again; but not many months were to pass before she was to find herself, on her own petition and bond of $500, a prisoner, by the only choice the laws allowed her, in the famous calaboose, not as a criminal, but as sequestered goods in a sort of sheriff's warehouse. Says her petition: "Your petitioner has good reason to believe that the said Belmonti intends to remove her out of the jurisdiction of the court during the pendency of the suit"; wherefore not he but she went to jail. Here she remained for six days and was then allowed to go at large, but only upon giving still another bond and security, and in a much larger sum than she had ever been sold for.
The original writ of sequestration lies before me as I write, indorsed as follows:
No. 23,041.
| Sally Miller vs. Louis Belmonti. | } | Sequestrian Sigur, Caperton Bonford. |
Received 24th January, 1844, and on the 26th of the same month sequestered the body of the plaintiff and committed her to prison for safe keeping; but on the 1st February, 1844, she was released from custody, having entered bond in the sum of one thousand dollars with Francis Schuber as the security conditioned according to law, and which bond is herewith returned this 3d February, 1844.
B.F. LEWIS, d'y sh'ff.
Inside is the bond with the signatures, Frantz Schuber in German script, and above in English,