a
man--words which I suppose this Honorable Court will consider as a
constructive "misdemeanor;" "obstructing an officer."

For this "offence" his case was presented to the grand-jury of the
Circuit Court the 29th of September, 1851. Judge Kane charged the
jury--laying down the law of treason. Mr. Hanway was indicted for
"wickedly devising and intending the peace and tranquillity of the ...
United States to disturb;" and that he "wickedly and traitorously did
intend to levy war against the said United States." And also that he
"with force and arms, maliciously and traitorously did prepare and
compose and ... and cause and procure to be prepared and composed,
divers books, pamphlets, letters, and declarations, resolutions,
addresses, papers, and writings, and did ... maliciously and
traitorously publish and disperse ... divers other books ...
containing ... incitement, encouragement, and exhortations, to move,
induce, and persuade persons held to service in any of the United
States ... who had escaped ... to resist, oppose, and prevent, by
violence and intimidation, the execution of the said laws, [that is
the law for kidnapping their own persons]."

He was brought to trial at Philadelphia, November 24th 1851, before
Honorable Judges Kane and Grier, then and subsequently so eminent for
their zeal in perverting law and doing judicial iniquity. Gentlemen of
the Jury--it is no slander to say this. It is their great glory that
in the cause of Slavery they have struck at the first principles of
American Democracy, and set at nought the Christian Religion. It is
only their panegyric which I pronounce.

On behalf of the government there appeared six persons as prosecuting
officers. One United States Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Cooper),
the Attorney-General of Maryland, the District Attorney of
Pennsylvania, the Recorder of the City of Philadelphia, and two
members of her bar.[178] For Mr. Webster, then Secretary of State, was
highly desirous that Maryland should send her Attorney-General, Hon.
Mr. Brent, to help the government of the United States prosecute a
Quaker miller, a Non-resistant, for the crime of treason. Hon. James
Cooper, the Pennsylvania Senator, also appeared on behalf of Maryland,
seeking to convict one of his own constituents! Gentlemen, such
conduct carries us back to the time of the Stuarts; but despotism is
always the same. It was very proper that the United States government
should thus outrage the c