length of time, to enable the judges to receive
this application and to hear the case." "On a private
intimation to the presiding judge of our desire to confer
with him [the desire of the kidnapping commissioners, Mr.
B.F. Hallett, Mr. Edward G. Loring, Mr. C.L. Woodbury, and
Mr. G.T. Curtis] the jury were dismissed at _an earlier hour
than usual, ... and every person present except the
Marshal's deputies left the room, and the doors were
closed_." "The learned Judge said ... that he would attend
at half past eight the next morning, to grant the warrant."
"A process was placed in the hands of the Marshal ... in the
execution of which he might be called upon to _break open
dwelling-houses, and perhaps take life_, by quelling
resistance, actual or _threatened_." "I devoted at once a
good deal of time to the necessary investigations of the
subject." "There is a great deal of legislation needed to
make the general government independent of State control,"
says this "Expounder of the Constitution," "and independent
of the power of mobs, whenever and wherever its measures
chance to be unpopular." "The office of United States
Marshal is by no means organized and fortified by
legislation as it should be to encounter popular
disturbance."

7. The warrant having been issued for the seizure of Mr. Craft,
Marshal Devens applied to Benjamin R. Curtis for legal advice as to
the degree of force he might use in serving it, and whether it ought
to be regarded as a civil or a criminal process. George T. Curtis was
employed by his brother to search for authorities on these points.
They two, together, as appears from the letter of George T. Curtis to
Mr. Webster, induced Marshal Devens to ask a further question, which
gave Benjamin R. Curtis an opportunity to come out with an elaborate
opinion in favor of the constitutionality of the fugitive slave bill,
dated November 9, 1850. This was published in the newspapers. In order
to maintain the constitutionality of this act, Benjamin R. Curtis was
driven to assume, as all its defenders must, that the Commissioner, in
returning the fugitive, performs none of the duties of a Judge; that
the hearing before him is not "a case arising under the laws of the
United States;" that he acts not as a judicial, but merely as an
executive and "ministerial" officer--not deciding him to be a slave,