Wendell Phillips to Mrs. Elizabeth Pease Nichol.
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house, ending in repulse and in the death of one of the deputy marshals; how President Pierce and the Mayor1 of Boston concentrated all the military within reach to prevent a second attempt and enforce the decision of the court; how Commissioner Loring yielded up the victim2 to his master; and how, amid every emblem and manifestation of popular indignation and mourning, Burns3 was carried down State Street between armed files to the place of embarkation.
To point the contrast that nullification of the Compromise of 1850 meant treason, while nullification of the Missouri Compromise by Congress at Washington meant simply a return to the Constitution, Judge Benjamin R. Curtis charged the Grand Jury to 4 inParker and Phillips for their Faneuil Hall harangues, as ‘obstructing the process of the United States.’5
3 Lib. 24.90, 91; 25.34, 38, 42, 59.
5 Edmund Quincy wrote to Richard Webb, Oct. 24, 1854 (Ms.): ‘Phillips has just returned to town from his villeggiatura in my neighborhood. Judge Curtis, of the U. S. Supreme Court, and District Attorney Hallett are busy trying to indict him and Theodore Parker and the other speakers at the Faneuil Hall meeting the night the rescue of Burns was attempted. It is not very likely they will succeed, or that, if they do, a petit jury can be found to convict. If they could, the penalty might be a fine of $300 and a year's imprisonment. But they do not probably look to a conviction, but to the advantaging their own characters in the Southern market. Curtis is a man of great talent and learning, probably the greatest lawyer in the U. S., and not surpassed in the world; but he wants to be Chief-Justice, the highest judicial dignity in the country, and would do anything to qualify himself for it. He is not to be confounded with his brother, the Commissioner [George Ticknor Curtis], who sent Sims back [ante, p. 327], and who has been roasted in sundry and divers D. Y. letters [Quincy's Boston correspondence in the Anti-Slavery Standard].’ Indictments against both the orators were found in November (Lib. 24.190, 202). On Saturday, Nov. 18, 1854, Theodore Parker wrote to Francis Jackson (Ms.): ‘Thank you for the documents—I see where they will fit in. They say I am to be arrested this P. M., as late as possible, so as to preclude bail; the Boston Bens [Benjamin R. Curtis and Benjamin F. Hallett] wishing to shut up the meeting-house one day. Where can I find you this P. M. in case of need?’
6 Ms.
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