Page:Story of a Great Court.djvu/110

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72
The Story of a Great Court

evening, the door battered down, and Glover taken out and hurried away.

The following description of the affair contained in the weekly Racine Advocate of March 20, 1854, may prove interesting:

"A committee of twenty-five of the citizens of Milwaukee was appointed a committee of vigilance and protection. A committee of two was also appointed to wait upon the sheriff to see if he still persisted in refusing to serve the writ. This refusal being persisted in, measures were immediately taken to see what steps were necessary to see that the 'Republic received no detriment' and that the laws of the land were enforced. The citizens of Milwaukee, on this notice being given, assembled to the number of five thousand in the court house square, where they were addressed by the most eloquent and influential members of the Milwaukee bar. The excitement continued and spread to all parts of the city. At five o'clock the delegation from this city arrived at Milwaukee and were escorted to the court house square, where the citizens of Milwaukee were listening to addresses upon the subject matter. The military had been ordered out, but did not appear on the streets. At six o'clock the friends of law and order came to the conclusion that it would be unsafe, as well as eminently wicked, for a human being to be locked up in a jail over the Sabbath against whom no crime had been alleged; accordingly a courier was despatched for a team, and as the court house bell rang the tocsin of liberty the writ of 'open sesame' was enforced, while the glorious sun sank smilingly in the west as he shed his rays upon the spires of Milwaukee for the 11th day of March, 1854; a glorious prelude to the coming day of rest. The doors of the prison shook as though another Peter were within, and the willing cell yielded up its victim to the fresh light and air of God's glorious earth. The negro waved his hat as he mounted the wagon in return to the waving of hats and joyous shouts which arose from that vast crowd of freeman who said that the Milwaukee jail could not be used for the confinement of men who had committed no crime."

The mixture of biblical allusion, "fine writing" and satire in this account is certainly amusing, if not effective.