"Judge Grier denounced the act from the Bench as one of Treason. A party of marines were ordered to the ground to keep the peace after the battle had been fought and won. United States Marshal Roberts, Commissioner Ingraham, United States District Attorney Ashmead, with a strong body of police, accompanied them, and kept the seat of war under a kind of martial law for several days. The country was scoured, houses ransacked, and about thirty arrests made. Among those arrested were Castner Hanway and Elijah Lewis, whose only crime had been endeavoring to prevent the effusion of blood. The prisoners were brought to Philadelphia, examined before a Commissioner, and committed on a charge of High Treason. At the next term of the District Court, under a charge from Judge Kane, the Grand-Jury found indictments against all of them for this crime."[177]
Mr. Hanway was brought to trial—for his life, charged with "treason." It appears that this was his overt act.—He was a Quaker, an anti-slavery Quaker, and a "non-resistant;" when he heard of the attack on the colored people, he rode on a sorrel horse to the spot, in his shirt-sleeves, with a broad felt hat on; he advised the colored men not to fire, "For God's sake don't fire;" but when Deputy Marshal Kline ordered him to assist in the kidnapping, he refused and would have nothing to do with it. Some of the colored people fired, and with such effect on the Kidnappers as I have just now shown. It appeared also that Mr. Hanway had said the fugitive slave bill was unconstitutional, and that he would never aid in kidnapping a man—words which I suppose this Honorable Court will consider as a constructive "misdemeanor;" "obstructing an officer."
For this "offence" his case was presented to the grand-jury of the Circuit Court the 29th of September, 1851. Judge Kane charged the jury—laying down the law of treason. Mr. Hanway was indicted for "wickedly devising and intending the peace and tranquillity of the ... United States to disturb;" and that he "wickedly and traitorously did intend to levy war against the said United States." And also that he "with force and arms, maliciously and traitorously did prepare and compose and ... and cause and procure to be prepared and composed, divers books, pamphlets, letters, and declarations, resolutions, addresses, papers, and writings, and did ... maliciously and traitorously publish and disperse ... divers other books ... containing ... incitement, encouragement, and exhortations, to move, induce, and persuade persons held to service in any of the United States ... who had escaped ... to resist, oppose, and prevent, by violence and intimidation, the execution of the said laws, [that is the law for kidnapping their own persons]."
He was brought to trial at Philadelphia, November 24th 1851, before Honorable Judges Kane and Grier, then and subsequently so eminent for their zeal in perverting law and doing judicial iniquity. Gentlemen of the Jury—it is no slander to say this. It is their great glory that in the cause of Slavery they have struck at the first principles of American Democracy, and set at nought the Christian Religion. It is only their panegyric which I pronounce.
On behalf of the government there appeared six persons as prosecuting officers. One United States Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Cooper), the Attorney-General of Maryland, the District Attorney of Pennsylvania, the Recorder of the City of Philadelphia, and two members of her bar.[178] For Mr. Webster, then Secretary of State, was highly desirous that Maryland should send her Attorney-General, Hon. Mr. Brent, to help the government of the United States prosecute a Quaker miller, a Non-resistant, for the crime of treason. Hon. James Cooper, the Pennsylvania Senator, also appeared on behalf of Maryland, seeking to convict one of his own constituents! Gentlemen, such conduct carries us back to the time of the Stuarts; but despotism is always the same. It was very proper that the United States government should thus outrage the common decencies of judicial process.
This question amongst others was put to each juror:—
"Have you formed an opinion that the law of the United States, known as the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, is unconstitutional, so that you cannot for that reason convict a person indicted for a forcible resistance thereto, if the facts alleged in the indictment are proved and the court hold the statute to be constitutional?"
Thus all persons were excluded from the jury who believed this wicked bill a violation of the constitution; and one most important means of the prisoner's legitimate defence was purposely swept away by the court.
Now look at the law as laid down by the government.
Mr. Ashmead, the government's Attorney, said when the Constitution was adopted "Men had not then become wiser than the laws [the laws of England and colonial laws which they were born under and broke away from]; nor had they learned to measure the plain and unambiguous letter of the Constitution by an artificial standard of their own creation [that is the Self-evident Truth that all men have a natural and unalienable Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness]; to obey or disregard it according as it came up to or fell beneath it [as the law was just or unjust]."