James W. C. Pennington to Frederick Douglass, January 5, 1849
JAMES W. C. PENNINGTON TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS
New York, [N.Y.]1The placeline of the letter also includes “38, West Broadway.” 5 January 184[9].2The printed letter erroneously lists the year as 1848.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS:—
We have just had a hard-fought battle with a certain negro-hunting villain, named John Lee,3A distant cousin of the Lee family of Virginia and son of a former governor of Maryland, John Lee (1788–1871) served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1823 to 1825. In 1850, on his Frederick County plantation “Needwood,” he held approximately thirty-six slaves. His wife, Harriet Carroll Lee, was a distant cousin to Ann Carroll Fitzhugh Smith, Gerrit Smith’s wife. 1850 U.S. Census, Maryland, Frederick County, Peterville, 386–87, 193 (slave schedule); Edmund Jennings Lee, Lee of Virginia, 1642–1892 (Baltimore, 1983); BDAC, 1380. of Frederick county, Md., who came on here with a determination to kidnap and carry off two innocent colored young men upon whom he had fixed his covetous eye. Accordingly, on the 20th ult., at half past eight o’clock in the morning, and while Joseph Belt4The captor of Joseph Belt, an alleged fugitive slave from Maryland, prepared to transport him back to Maryland after seizing him on the streets of New York City and holding him against his will for two days. Friends secured a writ of habeas corpus that brought the case before the First Circuit Court of New York. Belt was successfully defended by John Jay, grandson of the U.S. chief justice. Paul Finkelman, An Imperfect Union: Slavery, Federalism, and Comity (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1981), 136. was walking peaceably through Duane street, two white rascals in the employ of Lee, for
that purpose, came upon him, and without warrant, or anything in the shape of legal process, arrested him on pretence that he had stolen a coat.—Having got him in their clutches, they carried him in a coach to a hotel in Broadway, where the said John Lee first made his appearance, and on seeing Belt, said, “I will pay you for all this.”
Subsequently, the young man thus kidnapped, in open day, was taken to Long Island, where he was found on Thursday night. He was brought before Judge Edmonds5John Worth Edmonds (1799–1874), a lawyer, served in the New York state legislature, as an Indian commissioner appointed by Andrew Jackson, and as prison inspector for the state of New York. Appointed a judge of the First Circuit of New York in 1845, Edmonds served as a justice of the state supreme court in 1847. In 1852 he became a judge on the New York appellate court. Edmonds remained a respected lawyer after leaving the bench in 1853, practicing in New York until his retirement. DAB, 3:23–24. on Friday, the 22d ult., and after several days’ delay, was discharged on the ground of illegal arrest in the first place, and in the second place on the ground of the absence of proof that the laws of Maryland sanction slavery. The Judge held that he was not bound to take it for granted that because slavery exists in Maryland, therefore it is sanctioned by her laws, nor that he is bound to believe that a certain volume which Mr. Lee’s counsel held in his hand, purporting to contain the laws of Maryland, were published by the authority of the State.
I am told that John Lee represents an association of slaveholders, who have resolved to join their purses together, for the purpose of testing the strength of the Constitution and laws of Congress on the recovery of fugitives. I believe it is generally understood here, that had not Lee’s counsel committed the two errors above stated, or rather Lee one and his counsel the other, they would have taken Belt away upon purely Constitutional grounds.6Edmonds ruled that Lee had circumvented due process under the fugitive slave clause by failing to obtain a certificate of removal from a federal judge. His ruling not only freed Belt, but set a precedent against the holding and transporting of slaves in the state of New York that would discourage slaveholders from indefinitely bringing their slaves into the state. Finkelman, Imperfect Union, 136. Mighty God—what a government! These Maryland scamps must be met and conquered. What do you say to forming a Maryland society at the North?
Yours, in haste,
J. W. PENNINGTON.
PLSr: NS, 12 January 1849.