nsidered by the Court;
and where no statutes have been enacted, this case may be considered
as settling the legal questions touching the rights of the slaveholding
population, on the one hand, to protect themselves from foreign
influence; and the circumstances, on the other hand, which may bring
people from the nonslaveholding States into danger of the law, by having
in their possession, showing, or circulating, papers and tracts which
advocate the abolition of slavery in such a way as to excite slaves and
free people of color to revolt and violate the existing laws and customs
of the slaveholding States. No trial has ever occurred more important to
travellers from the North, or to the domestic peace of the inhabitants
of the Southern States.

THE TRIAL

OF

REUBEN CRANDALL, M. D.

ON A CHARGE OF

CIRCULATING INCENDIARY PAPERS.

UNITED STATES' CIRCUIT COURT,

_District of Columbia, Friday, April 15th, 1836._

PRESENT:

CRANCH, chief justice, THRUSTON and MORSELL, justices.

F. S. KEY, district attorney, and J. M. CARLISLE, for the prosecution.

R. S. COXE and J. H. BRADLEY, for the defence.

John H. King, Nicholas Callan, James Kennedy, Walter Clarke, George
Crandall, William Waters, Thomas Hyde, Thomas Fenwick, Samuel Lowe,
George Simmes, Wesley Stevenson, and Jacob Gideon, jr., were empannelled
and sworn as jurors to try the issue.

This was an indictment charging, in five counts and in various forms,
the offence under the common law of libels, of publishing malicious and
wicked libels, with the intent to excite sedition and insurrection among
the slaves and free colored people of this District. The three first
counts only having been relied upon, and no evidence having been offered
under the others, an abstract, omitting the mere formal part, will be
sufficient to show the nature of the libels charged.

1st. The first count charged the defendant with publishing a libel,
containing in one part thereof these words: "Then we are not to meddle
with the subject of slavery in any manner; neither by appeals to the
patriotism, by exhortation to humanity, by application of truth to
the conscience. No; even to propose, in Congress, that the seat of
our republican Government may be purified from this crying abomination,
under penalty of a dissolution of the Union."

And in another part thereof, in an article entitled "Reply to Mr. Gurley's
letter, addressed to the Rev. R. R. Gurley, Secretary o