A History of the Trial of Castner Hanway and Others, for Treason, at Philadelphia in November, 1851 / With an Introduction upon the History of the Slave Question

by Member of the Philadelphia bar

The law of Treason was next considered, and he presented his views at length to the Jury. In conclusion, he repeated that the “State of Maryland did not thirst for innocent blood. She thirsted only for the pure undefiled fountains of Justice. She stood there for her rights, and stood undaunted.”

Mr. Read, the senior counsel for the defence, followed in an elaborate and searching argument. No part of the case was left untouched. The only report of his remarks to which we have access, is very meagre, not as full as that of the latter part of Mr. Brent’s speech. He alluded in opening to the monstrous doctrine that the Constitution allowed a master the right of seizing his slave wherever found, without even offering to establish his identity, as had been alleged to be the Law by those who had commented upon the case of kidnapping from Chamberlain’s house. Prosecutions and abuse for not sanctioning such outrages as these, were equivalent to saying, “if you do not turn negro catcher, we will indict you for treason.”

He continued with a rapid and striking sketch of English history, throughout the period from which the cases relied upon by the prosecution had been selected,—reviewing it reign by reign, showing with great force the barbarous and tyrannical character of the times, whose principles it was attempted to write into the Constitution of America in the nineteenth century. Having laid this general foundation, he proceeded to discuss at length each particular case that had been cited; and not confining himself to the mere face of the report, he searched out the facts from an array of collateral authorities, such as was probably never before submitted to any Court in any State trial, exhibiting the state of parties, the influences at work upon the Bench and the Juries, the character of the Judges, and the real value which ought to be attached to their decisions. Coming down to the later periods of English Jurisprudence, he insisted that even their Courts had abandoned these principles, and would not now listen to the authorities which the prosecution had attempted to enforce in Republican America; and showed conclusively that at the present day in England, no man could be convicted of treason in levying war, unless an open insurrection or rebellion were actually raging in the land, and aiming at the change or destruction of the Government. Passing next to the American decisions, he argued, that stripped of the improper phraseology in which some of them had been clothed, they established the same doctrine, and that when this phraseology appeared to cover wider grounds, it had been derived from earlier English cases, which at the time of making the decisions were supposed by our Judges to be the actually existing law of England, our lawyers then not having the means of exposing their utter worthlessness.

Having established the general rule above stated as the result of the decisions now in force, Mr. Read passed to an analysis of the facts of the case; showing in the first place how utterly preposterous was the attempt to dignify this miserable riot with the name of insurrection and rebellion, and that looking at it in its true light, Hanway was not and could not have been a participator. The only overt act he committed, consisted in giving insolent replies to Kline, and the evidence of this was wholly uncorroborated, depending entirely on Kline’s credibility. “A man morally and physically deaf, comes here and says he heard the defendant whisper to the colored men the words, ‘shoot at them.’ A perjured man who don’t hear and can’t hear, is brought into this court to convict an innocent man, whose hands are white—not red with the blood of his fellow man.”

From the contradictions in Kline’s own testimony, and the opposing evidence, both of the government and the defence, he showed beyond a doubt the perjury of this essential witness; that he was not and could not have been near the bars at the time of the firing, but almost half a mile away in the woods. As this single point was absolutely fatal to the case of the prosecution, he thought it useless to expend time on minor and immaterial details.

After reviewing the testimony of the prosecution, he passed to that of the defence, and showed wherein it supplied the defects of the Government’s case. He commented upon the conduct of Harvey Scott, “who had been tutored to tell a story, and who was frightened into it by Marshal Kline.”

The unfortunate termination of the attempt to arrest the slaves of Mr. Gorsuch, was owing to the imbecile and foolish conduct of Kline. “He had prowled up and down a peaceful country, drinking and carousing, and blustering about horse thieves, until all the slaves had notice of his coming. Had the Chief Marshal of this Court been sent, instead of this prating villain, all the slaves within reach might have been arrested without loss of blood.”

The conclusion of his remarks, was an interesting summary of the laws enacted in the Southern States for the government of the slaves, exhibiting at length their real position, and the real relations existing between them and their masters.

The object of this concluding part of his argument, was to show that a riot, which in a free State was a mere temporary ebullition, might in the South be a matter of much more serious moment, intimately affecting the lives and property of the masters; but that we could not be required to transplant Southern notions, resulting from a peculiar institution, into Northern law and Northern Courts.

We have never seen a miscellaneous audience listen with such earnest attention to a purely legal argument, as did the concourse that thronged the Court room, to the strictly technical part of Mr. Read’s speech.