If, upon such a warrant as was issued against this traverser, any individual in this community might be arrested, his papers seized and examined, his most private correspondence exhibited to the public gaze, and if all this proceeding was to be warranted by the laws under which we live, then, gentlemen, said Mr. Coxe, this District is no place for me. He would seek some place where he would be safe from such outrages—some place where the principles of civil liberty are still understood and cherished.
If, upon testimony thus illegally obtained from him, without having been guilty of any overt act against the peace of the community, he could be indicted for sedition, incarcerated for eight months preparatory to a trial, and then be told that for having such publications as the traverser had in his private custody, under his own lock and key, or for loaning one to an intelligent friend, for his single perusal, he should be exposed to conviction and punishment for sedition, then he would, to escape such tyranny, expatriate himself, abandoning a land no longer free.
But this was not, and could not be the law of this District. What was the case? Let us go back to the 10th of August last, when this warrant was placed by a justice of the peace, acting under the advice of the District Attorney, in the hands of the officers who served it. The only foundation of the prosecution was simply this: Mr. King, while visiting the office of the traverser, with whom he was in habits of intimacy and free intercourse, saw there lying about the room, amongst various works on different branches of science and the arts, three pamphlets, which were taken from a box containing surgical instruments, books on surgery, and botanical preparations, in packing all which the pamphlets had been with other papers employed. Mr. King casually taking up one of these pamphlets, read its title page, and remarked that this was too far South for such things. He asked permission of the traverser to read it, which was granted, and up to the 10th day of August, a month afterwards, this was the extent of Dr. Crandall's offence. The affidavit in the warrant did not even go so far as this, in any positive charge. William Robinson, who made the affidavit, deposed that he had seen in Georgetown an incendiary pamphlet having upon it the name of Dr. Crandall, and that he, the deponent, had been informed and believed, that Dr. Crandall was engaged in distributing and circulating such pamphlets. The only positive averment in the affidavit was unimportant, and, if important, was untrue. Mr. Robinson, when examined, had no recollection of such a pamphlet, and there was abundant evidence to prove that the pamphlet loaned to King was now in court, and there was no such endorsement on it. He had not, therefore, seen a tract with Dr. Crandall's name upon it. That Dr. Crandall was engaged in the circulation of this or similar pamphlets was equally unsupported by evidence. Upon this allegation, so flimsy and so false, the Justice, acting under the advice of our learned District Attorney, issued the illegal and unconstitutional precept which he held in his hand. By this warrant the constable was directed to search and examine the traverser's private papers, to select such as might appear to be incendiary and to bring them and the traverser before some justice of the peace, to be dealt with according to law.
This illegal process, thus illegally executed, had been justified by the District Attorney, who had avowed himself ready, whenever required, to prove that it was lawful. On the other hand, he, Mr. Coxe, pledged himself, on all occasions, and whenever the question might be presented for argument and decision, to brand it as tyrannical, oppressive, illegal, and unconstitutional.
The next evidence for the prosecution was found in the pamphlets thus stolen, and the possession of them by the traverser was alleged as proof of their publication by him. Against this false and more than inquisitorial doctrine, he solemnly protested. Let the accidental possession of a denounced pamphlet be made proof of its utterance and publication by the possessor, and let the new process of detecting and bringing to light that obnoxious pamphlet be established, and what man, in the whole community, can be safe in the enjoyment of his personal rights? May not any man be subjected to be treated as a felon, upon the instigation of private malice, or party animosity, or religious rancor? How easy would it be to find a magistrate at any time, who, confiding in the learning and experience and official character of the District Attorney, will, at his instance, grant such a search warrant against any individual?—and how easy will it not be to find constables, who, in the execution of it, will raise a hue and cry, and an excitement against the individual at whom the process is levelled?—so that if he escape the tyranny of the law and of the officers of the law, he may, nevertheless, fall a victim to the blind and ignorant violence of popular fury!
Two things, Mr. Coxe said, must combine to bring the traverser, in this case, within the law, if indeed there was any law to meet the case. The publications themselves must be calculated to excite insurrection among the blacks, and contempt of government among the whites; and the mode and manner of the publication must be such as to justify the supposition that the publisher intended to produce this effect.
If both of these facts could not be proved, the prosecution must fail, and the traverser be entitled to a verdict of acquittal. Admitting that the character of the pamphlets was incendiary, and as mischievous in their tendency as the District Attorney may, on this occasion, be pleased to represent them, still it cannot be shown that the traverser was guilty of any injurious or malicious dissemination of them. The loan to Mr. King was the only instance proved of distribution, and could that be considered malicious? Mr. King was admitted to be an intelligent and discreet citizen, without any sympathies with the abolitionists, and he could read one of these pamphlets with as little injury to the public welfare, as could this court and the many individuals to whom the District Attorney had been reading them. If the traverser had been criminal, Mr. Key had been still more so. If Dr. Crandall is punishable for yielding a reluctant and hesitating consent to the request of Mr. King to be allowed to take one of these pamphlets and read it, to what condemnation has Mr. Key subjected himself by forcing these same tracts, and particularly the worst passages he could select from them, upon the attention of so many individuals?
But another ground had been taken against the traverser. He was charged with being a northern man; a native of Connecticut, and a resident of New York. Have we then, said Mr. Coxe, lived to see the day when in a court of justice, in the federal city, under the very eyes of Congress, and of the National
Government, it can be urged against an individual arraigned at the criminal bar, as a circumstance of aggravation, or as a just ground for suspicion, that the individual comes from the North or the South, from the East or the West? But we were told, that the Northern men were interlopers and intruders amongst us. He protested against the use of such language, especially in the District of Columbia, which was dependant for its very existence upon the bounty of Congress, and which owed so much to the liberal policy extended to it by Northern men. Mr. C. admitted that there were in the North some vile fanatics, who, under the guise of purity and zeal, had attempted to scatter firebrands amongst us; men who propose to accomplish the worst ends by the most nefarious means; men who, under the professions of christian sympathy and humanity, seek to involve the South in all the accumulated horrors of a servile war. These men were, however, few in number and contemptible in resources. On the other hand, there were men at the South who, for base motives, make themselves auxiliaries to this excitement, and endeavor to alarm and agitate the people of the South by misrepresentations of the general feeling and policy of the people of the North. With neither of these two classes of fanatics had the people of this District any common interest. As a citizen of this District, he protested against making it the arena for the operations of these incendiaries. It was for this jury to resist the first attempt, now made, to render our courts of justice accessory to their designs.
He would demonstrate from the evidence that the traverser had no part in producing the excitement which prevailed in this District during the last summer. Dr. Crandall was not even the innocent cause of it. It was an excitement got up against Crandall, and not by him. When the constables went to his lodgings and office with their warrant, there was no excitement nor commotion among the people. All was calm, and but for the constables and their process, would have remained so. But they published in the streets of Georgetown the nature and object of their errand, and collected a number of individuals who were curious to see the result of this extraordinary search. One of the constables, Jeffers, after leaving the office of the traverser, goes to Linthicum's shop, and there proclaims to the assembly that "they had found more than they expected;" that "their hopes were more than realized." The constable then goes on to proclaim that he had found a large number of incendiary pamphlets, 150 or 160. Then ensued an excitement, and a cry was at once heard, "carry him across the street and hang him to the tree!" Such was the origin of the excitement which pervaded our community, and which the District Attorney lays to the charge of the traverser.