In August 1836, Eliza Small and Polly Ann Bates, two enslaved women from Baltimore who had run away, were arrested in Boston and brought before Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw.
Controversy over the fate of George Latimer led to the passage of the 1843 Liberty Act, which prohibited the arrest of fugitive slaves in Massachusetts.
The vast majority were committed to abolitionism; among the more outspoken activists were William Cooper Nell, Maria Stewart, and David Walker.
One of them sought out attorney Samuel Edmund Sewall,[note 1] who obtained a writ of habeas corpus from Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw.
When Deputy Sheriff Huggerford served the writ, accompanied by Sewall, they found Small and Bates locked in their cabin in a state of distress.
Attorney A. H. Fiske, representing Eldridge, read an affidavit by Turner declaring that the women were the property of his employer, and cited the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.
"[4] Turner, the slaveholder's agent, rose and asked the judge if he would need a warrant to arrest the women again under the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law.
The only officer in the room, Deputy Sheriff Huggerford, was grabbed by "an old colored woman, of great size," who threw her arms around his neck and stopped him from interfering.
[9] Although Boston was an important center of the abolitionist movement, its residents were by no means unanimously opposed to slavery or the Fugitive Slave Law.
Another accused Sewall of disgracing the legal profession and called for his censure by the bar for "instigating a mob of negroes to perpetrate an act at which every good member of society shudders.
"[11] Even the Liberator, the anti-slavery newspaper founded by William Lloyd Garrison, expressed mild disapproval, calling the incident "unjustifiable" but "not unpardonable.
The editor of the Columbian Centinel fulminated: The outrage was committed by a mob of several hundreds, and after three days search, neither the prisoners nor one of the rioters have been arrested.
[17] Writing in the Liberator sixteen years later, William Cooper Nell recalled the rescue as a testament to "the prowess of a few coloured women; the memory of which deed is sacredly cherished and transmitted to posterity.