1. A sense of duty, as an advocate of freedom, and a hater2 of tyranny and of all its abettors. 2. A desire to evince to the Southern people, that, in opposing slavery, I disregarded all sectional feelings, and that a New-England assistant was as liable to reprehension as a Maryland slaveholder. 3. A belief that the publication would ever afterward deter Mr. Todd from venturing into the domestic slave trade; and that it would be a rod over the backs of New-England merchants generally. Having proved, on my first trial, my main charges—viz., that the Francis carried away the slaves, and even thirteen more than I had stated—that the ship was owned by Mr. Todd—and that he was privy to the transaction—I determined to incur no expense, and to give myself no trouble, in relation to the second suit. I knew that my judges must be men tainted with the leprosy of oppression, with whom it would be useless to contend—men morally incapable of giving an impartial verdict, from the very nature of their pursuit. And here let me observe, en passant, that, though I do not say that a packed jury has convicted me, yet, knowing as I do how juries are selected in Baltimore, and recognizing also some of my condemners, I consider my trial as having had all the formality, but none of the substance, of justice. . . . Mr. Todd, as a high-minded man, should have been satisfied with the result of the former trial. The second suit betrays the meanness of avarice and the littleness of revenge. It was
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vessels, and his certain knowledge that Todd had never owned a slave in his life.
The defendant failing to appear,1 the case was submitted to the jury, who returned a verdict for Todd, with damages of one thousand dollars; but payment of this was never enforced, the defendant being safely beyond the reach of Maryland law. The proceedings of this trial were printed in the first number of the Liberator by Mr. Garrison, who subsequently published a candid commentary on them, disclaiming any personal hostility to Mr. Todd and Captain Brown, and asserting that in the publication of his strictures he was governed by the following very practical motives:
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