hern one, a
specimen of human property in the shape of a black girl fourteen years
old, by name Anne. By special enactment of Massachusetts no one could
be held in bondage thus unless perfectly willing, and certain citizens
of Holden, knowing that the treatment which the girl received could
not be borne except under duress, secured her person, and bringing her
to the Heart of the Commonwealth, made her "Free indeed." For thus
acting, these citizens were arrested and indicted, for just what, it
seems difficult, at this time, to state; but they were deemed or
called culpable for having, without her consent, taken this girl,
Anne, from bondage and actually giving her liberty. More than fifty
years ago this, and how like a dream the whole matter seems. Ira
Barton was the Justice of the Peace before whom one of the depositions
was made. Solomon Strong, the earliest appointed Judge of the Court
of Common Pleas, the Judge who heard the case. Pliny Merrick was the
District Attorney who conducted the prosecution, and Charles Allen the
Attorney who appeared for the defense. The trial had not advanced a
great ways ere Mr. Merrick declared that there was no cause of action,
and the jury at once acquitted the defendants. Charles Allen! A host
of recollections of the Free Soil and Anti-Slavery days spring into
being at the mention of his name. He was the Massachusetts Whig who,
in 1848, refused to bow the knee to the Southern Baal, and to his
fellow members of the Convention, after the nomination of General
Taylor dared to say: "You have put one ounce too much on the strong
back of Northern endurance. You have even presumed that the State
which led on the first Revolution for Liberty will now desert that
cause for the miserable boon of the vice-presidency. Sir,
_Massachusetts spurns the bribe_," referring thus to the proposed
nomination of Abbott Lawrence. It was a brother of Charles Allen our
late esteemed friend, the Rev. George Allen, who in the same year
offered to a meeting in Worcester, the most famous resolution of the
whole ante-bellum period. Catching the spirit of his brother's words,
he said: "Resolved, That Massachusetts wears no chains and _spurns all
bribes_; that Massachusetts now, and will ever go, for free soil and
free men, for free lips and a free press, for a free land and a free
world." This was a good key-note, and when, six years later, in 1854 a
slave-catcher came to this same city of Worcester, the citizens pr