When  slaves  escaped  the  local   slaveholders   suspected   Samuel Green (even while he was imprisoned), and especially when it was believed "that all the fugitives had passed in their flight immediately by  (Green's)  house,  which  stands  near the road  leading  from Cambridge to the State of Delaware."  98    Apparently,  "the planters of Dorchester County  were  fearful  of this  intelligent,  articulate,   free black and sought his ousting from the community as  a scapegoat for the absconding of their slaves."  99    The slaveholders  needed this scapegoat  because  they  still  viewed  themselves   as  benevolent owners whose slaves would be foolish to flee; as "they could not accept the notion that their slaves so disliked their situation as to seek  freedom without  some  instigation by an outside  agency."   100 But in the  final analysis the slaveholders and slave sympathizers had no  case  against Green but merely used  the  abolition  literature charge to make the case against him stick so that they could effectively remove Green from the area,  since they deemed him a threat to their livelihood and way of life.    In effect,  "they imprisoned a man for a decade for having in his possession a book that most people  in the  nation  had read with  sympathy—something  no  one (really)   considered   an   offense."   101
Green was  "released from prison on 21   April   1862, and was pardoned on condition that he  leave the  State within sixty days."