13 ([Return])
Niles' Weekly Register, vol. xxvii., p. 386.
14 ([Return])
Niles' Weekly Register, vol. xxviii., p. 71.
15 ([Return])
Ibid., p. 20.
16 ([Return])
In the year 1823 the State of South Carolina passed a law making it the duty of the sheriff of any district to apprehend any free negro or person of color, brought into that state by any vessel, and confine him in jail until such vessel depart, and then to liberate him only on condition of payment of the expenses of such detention. To this law William Johnson, a South Carolinian, and a judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, in a letter to Mr. Adams, then Secretary of State, called the attention of the President of the United States, as a violation of the constitution; and declared his belief "that it had been passed as much for the pleasure of bringing the functionaries of the United States into contempt, by exposing their impotence, as from any other cause whatsoever;" they being precluded from resorting to the writ of habeas corpus and injunction because the cases assumed the form of state prosecutions. William Wirt, also, the Attorney-General of the United States, in a letter to Mr. Adams, then Secretary of State, pronounced that law "as being against the constitution, treaties, and laws, and incompatible with the rights of all nations in amity with the United States."
17 ([Return])
Niles' Weekly Register, vol. xxxii., p. 162.