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| 630 THE VNDERGROUlfD SAIL SO AD, arrived, and in a very few words commended the lesson of his life to those present, after which the meeting dissolved, and the body was carried to the grave-yard in the rear of the meeting-house, and deposited in its last resting-place. THE TRIAL OP THE CASES, 1343. To the Editor of the Commercial: Your admirable and interesting sketch "of the career of the late Thomas Gairett contains one or two statements, which, according to my recollection of tiie facto, are not entirely accurate, and are perhaps of sufficient importance to be corrected. The proceedings in the U. S. Circuit Court were not public prosecutions or indictments, but civil suits instituted by the owners of the runaway slaves, who employed and paid counsel to conduct them. An act of Congress, then in force, imposed a penalty of five hundred dollars on any person who should knowingly harbor or conceal a fugitive from labor, to be recovered by and for the benefit of the claimant of such fugitive, in any Court proper to try the same; saving, moreover, to the claimant his right of action for or on account of loss, etc.; thus giving to the slave-owner two cases for action for each fugitive, one of debt for the penalty, and one of trespass for damages. There were in all seven elaves, only the husband and father of the family being free, who escaped under the friendly help and guidance -of Mr. Gar-rett, five of whom were claimed by E. N. Turner, and the remaining two by C. T. Glanding, both claimants being residents of Maryland. In the suits for the penalties, Turner obtained judgment for twenty-five hundred dollars, and Glanding, one for one thousand dollars. In these cases the jury could give neither less nor more than the amount of the penalties, en the proper proof being made. Nor in the trespass case did the jury give " larger damages than were claimed." A jury sometimes does queer tilings, but it cannot make a verdict for a greater sum than the plaintiff demands; in the trespass cases, Glanding had a verdict for one thousand dollars damages, but in Turner's case only nine hundred dollars were allowed, though the plaintiff sued for twenty-five hundred. It is hardly true to say that any one of the juries was packed, indeed, it would have been a difficult matter in that day for the Marshal to summon thirty sober, honest, and judicious men, fairly and impartially choeen from the three counties of Delaware, who would have found verdicts different from those which were rendered. The jury most have been fixed for the defendant to have secured any other result, on the supposition that the testimony admitted of any doubt or question, the anti-slavery men in the state being like Virgil's ship-wrecked mariners, very few in number and scattered over » v«at space. |