s and that it appears upon these
documents that if they should be delivered up they would by the laws
of the United States be exposed to be forced into a state of slavery
from which they had escaped two years ago when they fled from Kentucky
to Detroit; that if they should be sent to Michigan and upon trial be
convicted of the riot and punished they would after undergoing their
punishment be subject to be taken by their masters and continued in a
state of slavery for life, and that, on the other hand, if they should
never be prosecuted, or if they should be tried and acquitted, this
consequence would equally follow.

The next case was not so happy in its result. It caused much
excitement at the time and is not yet forgotten. Solomon Mosely or
Moseby, a Negro slave, came to the province across the Niagara River
from Buffalo which he had reached after many days travel from
Louisville, Kentucky. His master followed him and charged him with
the larceny of a horse which the slave took to assist him in his
flight. That he had taken the horse there was no doubt and as little
that after days of hard riding he had sold it. The Negro was arrested
and placed in the Niagara Gaol. A prima facie case was made out and an
order sent for his extradition.[16]

The people of color of the Niagara region made the Mosely case their
own and determined to prevent his delivery up to the American
authorities to be taken to the land of the free and the home of the
brave, knowing that there for him to be brave meant torture and death,
and that death alone could set him free. Under the leadership of
Herbert Holmes, a yellow man[17] a teacher and preacher, they lay
around the jail night and day to the number of from two to four
hundred to prevent the prisoner's delivery up. At length the deputy
sheriff with a military guard brought out the unfortunate man shackled
to a wagon from the jail yard, to go to the ferry across the Niagara
River. Holmes and a man of color named Green grabbed the lines. Deputy
Sheriff McLeod gave the order to fire and charge. One soldier shot
Holmes dead and another bayoneted Green, so that he died almost at
once. Mosely, who was very athletic leaped from the wagon and made his
escape. He went to Montreal and afterward to England, finally
returning to Niagara, where he was joined by his wife, who also
escaped from slavery.

An inquest was held on the bodies of Holmes and Green. The jury found
"justifiable homicide" in th