Sherman Booth

After he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale in 1841, he moved to Meriden, Connecticut and joined the staff of the abolitionist paper the Christian Freeman, becoming its associate editor.

[4] In 1851 he persuaded Whig Leonard J. Farwell to run for governor, resulting in his election and the interruption of control of the state by the Democratic Party.

[citation needed] The year 1854 began with the emergence in Congress of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, which would allow popular sovereignty to decide the issue of slavery in the territories.

[5] On the night of March 10, 1854 Joshua Glover, an escaped slave from Missouri, was seized in his shack in Racine, Wisconsin, by five men headed by his former master Bennami Garland and a federal marshal.

Before a crowd nearing 5,000, with some coming from Racine, Booth made clear the dangers of breaking the law, but nevertheless encouraged the mob to show its outrage.

Rather than deny his role in inciting the mob action, Booth charged that the law was unconstitutional, and rather than see the rights of a trial by jury nullified he said he would "prefer to see every federal officer in Wisconsin hanged on a gallows."

[7] Booth had surrendered himself back into federal custody so his lawyer Byron Paine could appeal for a writ of habeas corpus from the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The court, under Associate Justice Abram D. Smith, freed Booth, declaring that the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law was not only unconstitutional, but "a wicked and cruel enactment."

[9] On July 19, 1854, the state supreme court officially reaffirmed Smith's decision to free Booth, but two days later he was arrested again by federal officers.

[10] In January 1855 the jury, instructed to ignore the morality of the Fugitive Slave Law, pronounced Booth guilty and he was ordered to go back to prison.

Eight attempts were made to free Booth from jail before the ninth try was successful, and on August 1 ten sympathizers succeeded in transporting him to Waupun, Wisconsin.

Booth did not hide for long, and three days later was making a public speech in Ripon, WI where a friendly crowd prevented his rearrest by a deputy marshal.

Booth was jailed principally for not paying his fines in the previous case, but the extra security needed to prevent another jailbreak proved expensive.

As one of his last actions as U.S. president, James Buchanan freed Booth not by pardoning him but by remitting his fines, on request of U.S. district court judge Andrew G.

[citation needed] In November 1865 Booth continued to champion the rights of African-Americans by accompanying freedman Ezekiel Gillespie in two attempts to register and vote.

After he was refused, Booth and Gillespie's lawyer Byron Paine then appealed the decision, seeking to test a provision in an 1849 referendum that could be construed as allowing nonwhites to vote.