TRANSFIGURATION OF MARYLAND CULTURE, 1791-1802	53

nounced', replied Ashton, 'without a hearing, [and] without knowing or being
confronted with my accusers. Could a French revolutionary tribunal do
more?'86

During the summer of 1801 Ashton sent Carroll repeated messages, warn-
ing him, 'Do not provoke me or I will be a match for you'. But Carroll would
not be intimidated. 'Poor Ashton is outrageous..', he wrote in early July. 'His
violence & abuse & threats have no bounds'.87 Indeed, Carroll's unruly priest
would not leave quietly. Before he resigned his position at White Marsh,
Ashton sold several of the Mahoneys and embezzled the proceeds. As he
explained in a letter to Carroll:

I do not conceive myself to be under a necessity of making a public con-
fession of all the sins of my life, any more than yourself; But be
assumed that those reports are propagated by the Mahony's who [since
the Court's 1799 ruling] have all run away from me & are now dispersed
through the Country, & irritated because they see me the obstacle to
their freedom.88

In June 1802 Charles Mahoney and his family were not the only ones anx-
iously awaiting the decision of the Court of Appeals. Charles Carroll of
Carrollton sent repeated messages to Harper, begging for the 'earliest intelli-
gence' concerning 'the case of Mr. Ashton's Charles'. When the General
Court's decision was finally reversed and the case remanded for a new trial, a
relieved Carroll happily proclaimed, 'The court of appeals have decided the
negro cause in my humble opinion, as the general court ought to have decid-
ed it'.8'

Carroll's exuberance did not last long, however. The following month,
one of his slaves informed him that Mahoney's 'counsel had obtained such
proof as must put their right of freedom in a new tryal out of all doubt' .*
Ridgely confirmed this report, warning Carroll that the verdict of the Court of
Appeals would not affect the jury's final decision:

When the former trials were had in the general court, the council for
Ashton urged the jury to find in their special verdict, that Joyce was a
slave in Barbados, & was thence carried to England by her master &
sold to Lord Baltimore; but the jury refused to find this fact, they found
only that Joyce came from England....If in the new trial to be had in
October the jury shall be of the same opinion, the petitioners for free-
dom will succeed....The only material fact existing in the cause at this
time is where did Joyce come from to this Country? If from England,
Ashton must prove she was carried there as a slave. I think the weight