presented a petition of such tenor. The right of defending himself could not be denied him, and the old statesman, summoning all his powers, exposed the character of slavery and the slave-holding aristocracy with so unsparing a force that, after several days of torture, his accusers, with a sigh of relief, permitted the resolution of censure to be laid on the table. Even the exciting quarrel between Tyler and Congress attracted scarcely more of popular attention than this “trial of John Quincy Adams.”
But this experience did not teach the pro-slavery men prudence. Soon afterwards Joshua R. Giddings of Ohio offered in the House a series of resolutions concerning the case of the Creole, a brig, which, sailing with a cargo of slaves from Norfolk bound for New Orleans, had been taken possession of by the slaves, some of whom had risen in insurrection, overpowered the crew, killed a supercargo, and run the brig into the harbor of Nassau, where the British authorities had liberated the unoffending slaves and refused to surrender the mutineers. The resolutions of Giddings declared that slavery existed only by local municipal law; that the jurisdiction of the municipal law did not extend over the high seas; that the negroes on the Creole had not violated any law of the United States by claiming their natural right to individual freedom on the high seas, and that any attempt to make them slaves again by an exertion of the national power was unauthorized by the
