The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D.Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers   By: Unknown

This ebook retains the spelling and punctuation variations of the original text published in 1836. A few corrections have been made where inadvertent typographical errors were suspected. Details of these corrections can be found in a Transcriber's Note at the end of this text.

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 A MEMBER OF THE BAR.

WASHINGTON CITY. PRINTED FOR THE PROPRIETORS. 1836.

Entered according to the act of Congress, in the year 1836, in the Clerk's office of the District of Columbia.

NOTICE.

THE TRIAL OF CRANDALL presents the first case of a man charged with endeavoring to excite insurrection among slaves and the free colored population that was ever brought before a judicial tribunal. It lasted ten days before the whole Court, and was as closely contested as any trial on record, by the counsel on both sides. Every point of law was fully and strenuously argued, and carefully considered by the Court; and where no statutes have been enacted, this case may be considered as settling the legal questions touching the rights of the slaveholding population, on the one hand, to protect themselves from foreign influence; and the circumstances, on the other hand, which may bring people from the nonslaveholding States into danger of the law, by having in their possession, showing, or circulating, papers and tracts which advocate the abolition of slavery in such a way as to excite slaves and free people of color to revolt and violate the existing laws and customs of the slaveholding States. No trial has ever occurred more important to travellers from the North, or to the domestic peace of the inhabitants of the Southern States.

THE TRIAL

OF

REUBEN CRANDALL, M. D.

ON A CHARGE OF

CIRCULATING INCENDIARY PAPERS.

UNITED STATES' CIRCUIT COURT,

District of Columbia, Friday, April 15th, 1836.

PRESENT:

CRANCH, chief justice, THRUSTON and MORSELL, justices.

F. S. KEY, district attorney, and J. M. CARLISLE, for the prosecution.

R. S. COXE and J. H. BRADLEY, for the defence.

John H. King, Nicholas Callan, James Kennedy, Walter Clarke, George Crandall, William Waters, Thomas Hyde, Thomas Fenwick, Samuel Lowe, George Simmes, Wesley Stevenson, and Jacob Gideon, jr., were empannelled and sworn as jurors to try the issue.

This was an indictment charging, in five counts and in various forms, the offence under the common law of libels, of publishing malicious and wicked libels, with the intent to excite sedition and insurrection among the slaves and free colored people of this District. The three first counts only having been relied upon, and no evidence having been offered under the others, an abstract, omitting the mere formal part, will be sufficient to show the nature of the libels charged.

1st. The first count charged the defendant with publishing a libel, containing in one part thereof these words: "Then we are not to meddle with the subject of slavery in any manner; neither by appeals to the patriotism, by exhortation to humanity, by application of truth to the conscience. No; even to propose, in Congress, that the seat of our republican Government may be purified from this crying abomination, under penalty of a dissolution of the Union."