with which you sustain points made by others are strikingly original. I cannot see that you leave anything further to be argued. * * *"
But the litigation had not ended; it was in fact but just begun. The discharge from confinement did not stop the prosecution of Booth in the United States Court. In July, 1854, Mr. Booth and one John Rycraft were finally indicted for violation of the fugitive slave law, and were arrested on warrants to answer the indictments. Booth again applied for a writ of habeas corpus to the Supreme Court, but it was unanimously denied, not because there had been any change of view in the minds of the justices on the main question, but because, the United States Court having obtained jurisdiction of the case and the prisoner being held by apparently lawful process issued by such Court, (and not by a Court Commissioner), no other Court should interfere and endeavor to take the decision of the question of jurisdiction away from that Court. This is the familiar rule of comity, by which, when the jurisdiction of a matter has been acquired by one Court, another Court of concurrent jurisdiction will not interfere.[1]
Booth and Rycraft were now tried in the United States Court, found guilty, and sentenced to a short term of imprisonment in the county jail and to pay a fine of $1,000.00. This conviction aroused intense feeling all over the State. Indignation meetings were held in Milwaukee and in many of the smaller places, most of which passed resolutions denouncing the conviction, and some going so far as to demand armed resistance. Again a writ of habeas corpus was issued from the Supreme Court and the prisoners were finally discharged in February, 1855, the Court deciding that
- ↑ 3 Wis. *145.
