house-the United States authorities having provided one by this time to the United States court-room, in the same building. Mr. Bacon, who acted for Sims's master, was there with his counsel, Seth J. Thomas. Robert Rantoul, Jr., Charles G. Loring, and Samuel E. Sewall were counsel for Sims.

At twenty minutes past nine the commissioner, George T. Curtis, took his seat. Sims's counsel asked for a delay, and a delay of twenty-four hours was granted. The trial, which began on Saturday, April 5, was a hard-fought battle, lasting for nearly a week. The length and earnestness of Mr. Rantoul's appeal in behalf of Sims and against the Fugitive Slave Law were equalled only by the close attention given him by the commissioner.

66

Meantime, outside of the court-room, there was much skirmishing with legal devices and counter-devices. Bacon and De Lyon, Bacon's companion, were arrested as kidnappers, but released on bail. Richard H. Dana and Robert Rantoul applied on April 8 for a writ of habeas corpus, setting forth," says the Commonwealth of that date, "that Sims was illegally and unconstitutionally held in custody"; for a strong effort was being made to get the Fugitive Slave Law declared unconstitutional. The application was, however, refused, and Judge Shaw published in the Advertiser of April 14 his opinion on the subject.

In the Advertiser for April 9 is this item:

"The friends of Thomas Sims . . . have made complaint against him for the assault upon Officer Butman at the time he was arrested. This is done in order to detain Sims here as amenable to Massachusetts law. . . . We learn, however, that Marshal Devens has made a similar complaint in the United States Court, has obtained a writ, and has served it upon Sims, so that the state and United States courts having concurrent jurisdiction in this case, and the United States officer being first in the field, the writ from the state court will not avail for its object."

It was on Friday, the 11th of April, that the commissioner gave his decision. He decided that Sims must be given up to the men who claimed him. Sims was carried back into the barred room; the crowd dispersed; nothing remained to prevent a prompt removal. The removal was planned with all secrecy; it was to take place at daybreak on Saturday morn

"I went to the court-house about quarter past four, where there was a body of about one hundred men armed with swords, marching and countermarching; there were one hundred and fifty men - half, or more, watchmen near Court Street, armed with their hooks. A large number of the first-named had police badges on their hats. The other persons, with the watchmen, were armed with sticks. There was a third body of twenty, armed with swords. At about five, the armed body came to the east door of the court-house, and stopped

The

before it. In a few minutes the door was thrown open. Some fifteen persons descended, among whom was Sims. Marshal Tukey, as I supposed, came out at the head. I was on the opposite side of the street, and it was not quite light. body of watchmen had previously marched to the outside of the hollow square of officers. There were from one hundred and fifty to two hundred spectators present. The body of men marched into Court Street and down to Long Wharf. There were a few hisses and a few exclamations of Shame!' but no attempt at disorder. When they reached the head of Long Wharf, Sims, with a body of men, went on board the Acorn, which was lying at the wharf. Within three minutes, the vessel began to move down the harbor. The officers returned in a body. Immediately, as the vessel left, by a spontaneous movement, the Reverend Mr. Foster, of Concord, offered a prayer, in which the members of the Vigilance Committee and others joined. Some remarks followed; and a hymn was sung, Be thou, O God, exalted high,' as the spectators made their way up the wharf."

An easily recognized pen wrote for the Commonwealth of April 14, under the heading of "The Stain":

"At last the fair fame of Massachusetts is blackened. She is fallen. In the dark days of her own slavery she held slaves, but she nobly burst her own chains, and still more nobly struck And till now she has off those of her bondmen. been true to her word of liberty. . She has never till this day been guilty of betraying the fugitive. . . . She sits in the dust, the slave of unutterable meanness, trying in vain to solace her self-respect with the lie that she has performed a constitutional duty. Men of Massachusetts,

which will turn with loathing from the brig Acorn and the sacrifice to despotism with which she is freighted. . . .”

Sims made one brief comment, as the brig carried him away: "And this is Massachusetts liberty!" On arriving at Savannah, he was severely flogged and was thrown into prison, where for two months he lay in a wretched cell. Then he was taken out and sent to a slave-pen in Charleston, but there must have been difficulty in selling him, for he was removed again and sent to New Orleans. In New Orleans he was purchased by a brick mason and taken to Vicksburg, where, as we are told in Austin's Life of Wendell

Phillips, he escaped, in 1863, to the besieging army. General Grant, it is said, gave him transportation to the North.

The Liberator for September 5, 1851, quoting the Commonwealth, says:

"We learn that Sims had received one flogging of thirty-nine stripes, the extent allowed by the law, and was about to receive another, for the crime of running away from Mr. Potter. He was promised that the last flogging should be remitted if he would ask Mr. Potter's forgiveness for the offence, but he refused."

It reminds one of Socrates' declaration that "neither in war, nor yet in law, may a man use every means of escaping death!"

A

BOUT fifty years ago, the little state of Rhode Island was agitated by a controversy which so nearly brought its citizens into armed collision with each other as to receive the name of a "war." Though the circumstances were then familiar to the whole country, they have so far faded from memory and are in themselves so curious as to merit a fresh recital. Though Rhode Island began as an innovator and boasts of having been first to proclaim and practise the doctrine of "soul-liberty" or freedom of opinion from the control of the civil power, she soon became very conservative, and some of her people recall the facts that she was the last state to ratify the Federal Constitution and the last to adopt a written constitution of her own, with as much pride as if a wise act necessarily grew wiser by postpone

ment.

In 1663, the colony of Rhode Island obtained from King Charles II. a charter, erecting a form of government. Under this charter, colony and state continued to be governed until 1842, no constitution being adopted at the Revolution, but the charter being still regarded as the fundamental law. In the course of a hundred

and eighty years, however, this form of government became, in the opinion of many Rhode Islanders, too old-fashioned for further service. The principal grounds of complaint were the restricted suffrage and the unequal representation in the legislature. The suffrage was confined to owners of a freehold of the value of one hundred and thirty-four dollars, and the eldest sons of such freeholders. The assignment of representatives, made by the charter, had come to involve such absurdity as that Newport, with a population of about eight thousand, had six representatives, while Providence, with a population of twenty-three thousand, had but four, and the town of Jamestown, with a population of three hundred and sixty-five, had two.

These defects led to agitation for a change, and for the adoption of a more liberal written constitution, as early as 1797. Nothing, however, was then done. The subject was discussed again in 1811 and 1820, and in 1824 a constitution (making, however, no extension of the suffrage) was proposed to the freeholders and rejected. In 1829, upon a petition for extension of suffrage, Benjamin Hazard made a report, famous in the annals of the

state, which is an elaborate and powerful defence of a restricted suffrage, and contains the much-quoted description of immigrants to Rhode Island as "persons who have adventured among us from other states or countries to better their conditions . . . and upon whose departure there is no restraint." In 1832 and 1834 other ineffectual efforts were made in the same direction.

These repeated failures and the deprivation of what they regarded as their right produced deep discontent in the minds of the disfranchised portion of the citizens, who despaired of ever obtaining what they sought through the regular channels of authority. As early as 1832 a party movement was begun with the object of awakening the public feeling and concentrating the efforts of those who desired a change. Frequent meetings were held, and inflammatory speeches were made. The landholding electors were generally substantial, well-to-do people, and their leaders, the men who became governors, senators, and members of the Assembly, belonged chiefly to old and wealthy families, lived in substantial, roomy, "colonial" houses, where they dispensed a liberal hospitality in the midst of the memorials of an ancestry of which they were as proud as any feudal nobles. The advocates of extended suffrage, on the other hand, were mostly mechanics and tradesmen, some of foreign birth or parentage, and generally not so rich as the members of the other party. Naturally, therefore, the controversy took on to some extent the form of a contest between the "aristocracy" and the "people," and the suffrage orators were liberal in the use of such terms as "aristocrats," "ruffled-shirt gentry," and the like. To emphasize the contrast they took pains to appear upon the rostrum arrayed in jackets of green baize and other styles of dress intended to mark their separation from the tyrannical wearers of ruffled shirts.

Little was accomplished by this movement, and it nearly died out; but in the spring of 1840 it revived and presently increased to greater strength than before. In the meantime, some lawyers and some of the freeholders, some even of the higher class among them, had joined the moveChief of these was Thomas Wilson Dorr, who was to bear the most conspicu

ment.

ous and trying part in the events which followed. 'Dorr belonged to an old, wealthy, and influential family, and was connected by blood and marriage with most of the leading "aristocrats " of the northern part of the state. He was born in 1805, graduated, with honor, at Harvard College in 1823, studied law in New York under Chancellor Kent, and in Rhode Island under some of the best lawyers in the state. He was now practising law in Providence, taking, at the same time, a warm interest in politics. He was a man of strict honor and integrity and high character, and to good abilities he joined an untiring patience and an indomitable will.

Between the spring of 1840 and that of 1841, the organization of the Rhode Island Suffrage Association, with branches in various parts of the state, was carried rapidly forward. Its declaration of principles was based upon the assertion that all men are created free and equal, and that the possession of property should create no political advantage. It maintained the right of the people to assemble by delegates and form a constitution, without regard to the absence of any authority for such proceedings from the existing government of the state. The right of the people to adopt a constitution in this way, and the legality of such a proceeding, were vehemently asserted by the supporters of the suffrage cause and as strongly denied by the friends of the charter government, who maintained that only through a convention legally called by the existing government could the people speak with authority. The discussion caused a general ploughing up of fundamental principles and a vast deal of talk about the rights of man, principles of '76, popular sovereignty, etc., etc., in which much enthusiasm was displayed, mingled with a small proportion of thought and learning. The theory of the suffrage party was succinctly expressed in the famous question of a suffrage orator, "If the soverinity don't reside in the people, where the does it reside?"

At the January session of the General Assembly, 1841, a convention was called, to meet in November, to frame a constitution. But this convention, like the previous ones, was to be elected by the "freemen," or qualified freeholders, only, and was regarded by the suffragists as a mere expedient, a device to quiet the agitators,

without effecting any reform. Determined, accordingly, to take independent action, they called a mass meeting of the friends of extended suffrage to meet in Providence on April 17, 1841.

The appointed day was ushered in by the ringing of all the church bells, and though a fine, drizzling rain fell during the whole of the proceedings, a great procession was formed and marched, to the music of a band, through the principal streets to an open space on the top of Federal Hill. The column was headed by butchers in white frocks, mounted, and bearing a banner with the figure of an ox and the inscription, "I die for liberty." They were followed by a body of nearly three thousand citizens, each wearing a badge with the legend, "I am an American Citizen," and carrying banners with appropriate inscriptions, among which were, "Worth makes the man, but sand and gravel make the voter"; "Virtue, Patriotism, and Intelligence vs. $134 worth of Dirt." A good many of the freeholding voters took part, whether induced by love of free suffrage or a desire to share in the patriotic feast which followed may perhaps be a question. According to a suffrage newspaper of the day, "a dead silence, broken only by the martial strains of three or four powerful and excellent bands, pervaded the immense column from right to left, and the expression of stern resolve sat on the brows of those who composed the congregated host." Arrived upon the ground, these sternly resolute patriots, after singing Old Hundred as a sort of grace, unbent so far as to consume an ox, a calf, and a hog, which had been roasted whole for the occasion, together with a loaf of brown bread ten feet long and two feet wide, and "several barrels of beer." The procession then re-formed, perhaps with somewhat smaller numbers, marched back to the "Town House," which was to Providence what the Forum was to Rome, and listened to several speeches on the great subject of the day.

Little attention was paid by the charter party to these proceedings and no alarm was excited; but the suffragists were much encouraged by the success of the mass meeting and pushed forward their preparations for a direct appeal to the people. On the 5th of May another meeting was held in Newport, where, on the same day,

the newly elected state government was being inaugurated. This was not quite so large or successful as the one in Providence, but was still pronounced by the suffrage organ "a glorious affair." It adjourned to meet in Providence on the 5th of July, when Independence Day was to be celebrated, and the patriots on their way home were warned of "the danger of the People where the Iron Sceptre of Aristocracy and Despotism prevailed."

Before the date of the adjourned meeting an effort was made by Samuel Y. Atwell, one of the best men in the suffrage party, a leader of the bar and a man respected by all parties for his character and ability, to induce the General Assembly to modify the act calling a convention, previously passed, so as to give better representation to the popular feeling, but his proposals were voted down. The suffragists were afterwards blamed for going on with their plans for an independent people's convention, while the convention called by the Assembly, afterwards called the "Landholders' Convention," had not yet shown what it would do; but it was replied, with much force, that previous experience and this action of the General Assembly showed that it would do nothing on the main question unless forced into it.

On the 5th of July, pursuant to a resolution of the May meeting, a mass convention was held in Providence. The city was unusually full of strangers, many of whom were drawn from the country towns by interest in the suffrage meeting. A long procession, in which were two of the independent military organizations of the state, escorted the orators to the ground, and a very large crowd was present at the meeting. Emphatic resolutions were adopted, the state committee was directed to call a convention to frame a constitution, and the unanimous vote of the meeting pledged its members to sustain and carry into effect such constitution, if adopted, "by all necessary means."

The ground upon which all these proceedings were taken and upon which the suffrage party acted was briefly this: that, under the American system of government, the absolute sovereignty resides in the people; that, at the Revolution, the sovereignty and the rights of the British crown passed to them, and the charter derived from a British king ceased to