| JOSHUA GLOVER The Glover episode became a celebrated case elsewhere than in Wisconsin. Here it stirred public excitement to fever pitch and profoundly affected the course of future events in politics. Joshua Glover was a runaway slave, who sought asylum in Racine in the early part of 1854. Racine was a way station on the route of the underground railway, and the abolition sentiment had made considerable headway among its people. The Glover found employment in a local mill. Once learning of Glover's whereabouts, his Missouri master, B. S. Garland, procured a process in the United States District court and proceeded to Glover's shanty in company with two deputy United States marshals. Glover was in his little shanty engaged in playing cards when his master and the marshals surprised him. He jumped up, and while resisting arrest, one of the deputies knocked him down with a club and leveled a pistol at his head, while the others handcuffed him. In the words of Sherman M. Booth, whose subsequent connection with the case gave him national notoriety, the slave "was knocked down and handcuffed, dumped mangled and bleeding into a democrat wagon, and with a marshal's foot on his neck taken to Milwaukee and thrust into the county jail." When a hundred determined men landed by boat from Racine, formed in line and marched toward the jail, the public excitement in Milwaukee grew intense. Great crowds congregated around the county jail and gathered on the grounds adjacent to the courthouse. There a great indignation meeting was held that ended in the storming of the jail. A mob led by John Ryecraft, battered down the jail doors, freed Glover and spirited him away to Canada. Glover's rescue gave rise to many legal complications and a great deal of litigation. The sheriff of Racine County arrested the slave-master and those who had aided in the capture of the fugitive, on a charge of assault. Garland obtained his release on a writ of habeas corpus. In the meantime the underground railway had conveyed the slave to Canada. Booth was arrested and a grand jury found a bill of indictment against him and two others. He appealed to the Supreme court for a writ of habeas corpus. The learned judges read long opinions declaring the Fugitive Slave law of 1850 unconstitutional. Contributed by Deborah Crowell |