The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. / Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. Carefully Reported, and Compiled from the Written Statements of the Court and the Counsel.

by Unknown

Key requested him to be sworn, and

Bradley testified, that he could identify the paper by several marks which he pointed out. He received it in November last, in consequence of a letter which he had written with a view to procure two or three, which were sent on through the post office. He wrote for them in consequence of

conversation with Crandall; (but he was not allowed to state the substance of what Crandall said.) How this paper came into Mr. Key's possession he did not know, but this disappeared from his desk in court, and two others had been taken from his office.

Considerable argument ensued upon the point, whether it was competent to give in evidence a printed copy of a known published libel, or whether in order to be evidence against the person on whom it is found, it must not be a written copy. On one side it was argued that every one might innocently have a printed copy, but the having a written copy would show some extraordinary interest in the libel; and the books all spoke of a written copy only as evidence of publication. For the prosecution it was urged that having a printed copy was stronger evidence than a written one, especially when the party had a number of copies of the same libel, endorsed in his own handwriting with words that showed an interest, and an intent to circulate it.

The Court was of opinion that it was competent to give in evidence such printed copies of the known published libel as were found upon the prisoner with the endorsement "read and circulate."

Two witnesses were called, Colclazier and Tippet, to testify to conversations held with Crandall in the jail, in which he spoke in favor of immediate emancipation and against slavery.

The case for the prosecution was here closed.

Mr. Bradley then stated the opening of the defence. After some general remarks upon the course taken by the prosecution, and difficulty of getting witnesses here to testify in behalf of the prisoner, from so great a distance, as well as the impossibility of putting in depositions in a criminal case, without the District Attorney's consent, which he would not give, he went on to call the attention of the jury to the details he meant to prove. He intended to show Crandall's whole course of life, from his boyhood up; that he was regularly educated as a surgeon and physician, and settled in Peekskill; and that no man ever obtained a higher character for probity and skill; that he never was a member of an abolition society, and there was none in the place where he lived; that he had no idea of stopping here when he came on, but came as the attendant of an invalid family with whom he had resided; that the pamphlets were packed up, not by him, but by the lady of the house, as waste paper, without his even dreaming of their contents; and that the endorsements were put on some two years ago. He would show also that he had subscribed for temperance papers; but that the abolition papers were sent to him without his knowledge of their contents; that after he arrived here, and found this the best field in the world for the study of botany, he concluded to stop and give a course of lectures, instead of going to the West, as had been his intention previously, according to arrangements he had made. The bundle that was given him in New York was sent without his knowledge of their contents. It remained tied up till a day or two before his arrest, when it was untied by Mrs. Austin; and, as had been proved by the officers who arrested him, up to that moment they had never been opened or even separated. He said he would show the law, and bring it to bear upon the points of the case; and he declared if he believed Crandall guilty of distributing or intending to distribute incendiary papers, he would abandon his cause, and no longer consider himself his counsel.

The following extracts of speeches made in the Capitol at Washington, at the eleventh annual meeting of the Colonization Society, in which slaveholders themselves made remarks which, it was urged by the defendant's counsel, were quite as strong, and as much calculated to excite sedition, as the words of the libel charged against the prisoner. Mr. Key read the parts of his own speech not enclosed in brackets, to show the difference of meaning in the whole papers, and the difference of intent. The paragraph in brackets was read by Mr. Bradley.

The following is from Mr. Harrison's speech: