August 22, 2025 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in the tense years before the Civil War, Joshua Glover — a man who had escaped slavery — was captured in Wisconsin under the Fugitive Slave Act. His fate seemed sealed until local abolitionists staged a daring public rescue that defied federal law in broad daylight, breaking down the doors of a jail to save him from bondage. That single moment of defiance helped give rise to the Republican Party and became a pivotal turning point in the fight for freedom that would shape the course of the Civil War. Michael Jahr, the creator of the documentary "Liberty at Stake," and Dr. Robert Baker, author of "The Rescue of Joshua Glover," share the remarkable story.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Up next to
story about an event in American history with profound implications
and a story that's been forgotten over time. You're to
tell the story of the rescue of Joshua Glover, a
fugitive slave. Is doctor Robert Baker and Michael Jarr, who's
(00:30):
the creator of the documentary Liberty at Stake the Joshua
Glover Story. Here's Michael to start us off. At the
moment that would change Joshua Glover's life forever.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
On the night of March tenth, eighteen fifty four, he
was playing cards with a couple of friends in his home.
What he didn't know his former slave owner never stopped looking,
and the slave catchers.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Knock on the door. Glover is societious. He has heard
that there are slave catchers abroad.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
There had been some people snooping around.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
The day before, so he says, don't answer the door,
but his friend unlatched it and the posse swept in.
I came across the story of Joshua Glover in the
Milwaukee County Historical Archives. I was working on industrial tort law.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I believe I first came across his story maybe ten
years ago. There is a plaque in downtown Milwaukee, just
on the corner of a park, and the plaque commemorates
what took place in that square in eighteen fifty four,
and there's just enough there to kind of whet your appetite.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
The short story of it was that he was jailed
in Milwaukee as a fugitive slave and.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Brought to the courthouse which had been in that square
back at that time.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
And his reputed slave owner, a man by the name
of Benamy Garland, had the Fugitive Slave Law of eighteen
fifty to extradite him from Wisconsin to Missouri, and rather
than allow this to happen.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
A crowd of five thousand people.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Broke Joshua Glover out of jail and then arranged for
him to flee to Canada, where he would live the
rest of those days in freedom.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
But in the events of March of eighteen fifty four
were a catalyst for much bigger events, the formation of
the Republican Party, which led to, obviously the election of
Abraham Lincoln, which contributed to the Southern States seceding and
Civil War and eventually emancipation. So I realized, oh my gosh,
there's a domino effect here, and it wasn't the sole event, obviously,
(02:39):
but one of many that were taking place, and we're
really ripping the fabric of the nation apart. The eighteen
fifties were a very turbulent time in America. The Kansas
Nebraska Act passed. People could vote to decide whether they
(03:00):
wanted to be a free state or a slave state.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
And this struck everybody as another capitulation to slaveholders.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
You can't vote to enslave your neighbor.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
All across, especially the Midwestern states, these Nebraska societies pop up.
They're almost like single issue political clubs. The other horrific
event during that same period with Kansas is what happens
in the Senate. Preston Brooks takes a cane to Charles Sumner,
I mean, nearly kills them on the floor of the
United States Senate, which, by the way, followed a long train,
(03:32):
long history of violence in the halls of Congress. There
were outright brawls in the House of Representatives.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Prior to that. As part of the bigger package of
bills adopted in eighteen fifty. Part of that was the
Fugitive Slave Act, which put stronger teeth into the ability
of slave owners to reclaim their slaves.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
You have to understand the Fugitive Slave Act had been
in force in the United States since seventeen ninety three.
This is something that comes up very very early in
American history as a fundamental problem. What are we going
to do now that we have free states and slave
states who share common borders. And the Constitution, of course
has an Article four, a fugitive slave clause. It's one
(04:14):
of the most poorly written parts of the Constitution, and
people start exploiting the weaknesses.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
A lot of states were putting up roadblocks that made
it much more difficult for slave owners to reclaim their
escaped slaves, that would give rights to anyone who was
accused of being a futuitive slave.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
You see more and more efforts by the enslaved to
escape bondage, and you see more and more willingness of
people in northern cities to assist. And so there's a
growing outcry amongst the states of the South that the
Constitution is not being respected, and they demand a congressional
(04:54):
settlement on this, and so Congress in eighteen fifty passes
a new Fugitive Slave and the new Fugitive Slave Act
has several features in it that make it fairly remarkable,
and it's really a novelty in American law. The first
is that it appoints new federal officers to oversee fugitive
(05:15):
slave renditions. The second prong is that they empower the
federal marshals to assist in returning fugitive slaves by giving
them tremendous authority. One of the authorities that they give
them is the power of posse commatatis. It's the ability
to say, during a crisis, I'm calling on all of
(05:39):
you citizens to help me enforce the law. So now,
with the power of possecommatatis, a federal marshal who is
seizing a fugitive slave can essentially conscript anybody around him,
any citizen, to assist him in returning this fugitive slave
to a slaveholder. And that is what really rankles people
(05:59):
in the North. Felt turned them into slave catchers. You remember,
in the North, not everybody was abolitionists, and there were
plenty of anti slavery people who were fine with slavery
so long as it stayed in the South, but they
had deep problems with allowing the slave states to extend
their slavery principles into free territories and into the free states.
Now they're going to become a part of this entire regime.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
How can we be a free state if we are
engaged in returning people to bondage.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
It suspends habeas corpus. It specifically denies fugitives a trial
by jury. It doubles the civil and criminal penalties that
are associated with helping fugitives escape. It was enormously risky.
You could be sentenced to prison, You could suffer a
fine that was crippling, catastrophic.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Back in that time, we're.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Talking about something that would amount to your livelihood. The
civil prosecutions that the fugitive slavac allowed but sometimes go
upwards of ten thousand. If you were a printer, for instance,
that was all of your equipment. If you were a
labor it would be essentially enough to put you into
(07:08):
debt prison for the rest of your life. And they
make federal marshals actually liable for the value of the
claimed fugitives should a rescue take place.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
So they really tried to put a lot more strength
in the ability of slave owners to come up to
the North track down their fugitive slaves, arrest them, have
no due process, and then return them back to a
lifetime of bondage. So that was in the southern perspective
that was a great development, but for people in the North,
like people in Wisconsin, that was horrific.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
And this fed complaints in the northern states that the
fugitive slave law was not just a novelty but patently unconstitutional,
and it was.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Really difficult at the time politically. The Democrats were kind
of seen as the slave party. The Whigs were becoming
more and more ineffectual, and then there were a couple
of other parties and they had abolitionist leanings, but they
were not strong parties.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
And this is all in advance of the midterm elections
that are going to occur in November of eighteen fifty
four at a pivotal point in American history. So Joshua
Glover's arrest is really kind of a fulcrum point. It
focuses national attention again on just how much the slaveholders
(08:23):
have succeeded in bending the Republic to their will.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
And you've been listening to doctor Robert Baker and Michael
jar In Jars, the creator of the documentary liberty at
stake the Joshua Glover story. They can be viewed at
www lastmilm dot com. Go to their website and help
them tell the inspiring story of Joshua Glover to a
(08:48):
national audience. And what we learned here is well, from
a quote, how can we be a free state if
we are returning people back to bond And that's about
as close as it gets to the full summary of
the problems between North and South, specifically as it relates
(09:10):
to the Fugitive Slave Act. When we come back more
of this story, the story of Joshua Glover here on
our American stories, and we continue with our American stories
(09:42):
and with the story of the rescue of fugitive slave
Joshua Glover. Let's get back into the story. Here again
is Michael.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Jar January, first, New Year's Day, eighteen fifty. Joshua Glover
was part of a slave auction on the courthouse steps
in Saint Louis. What a terrible way to start the
new year. A man named Venemy Garland purchased him, and
Venemy Garland had a farm just outside of Saint Louis.
Joshua Glover worked as a slave there for two years
(10:13):
before he decided that he was going to pursue his
own freedom and began to make his way four hundred
miles just a little under four hundred miles to the
abolitionist stronghold of Racine, Wisconsin. There was plenty of work
to be found. It was a burgeoning port city.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
It was actually in competition with Milwaukee.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
And for two years he actually was able to really
live out his dream of freedom. He must have been
a fairly accomplished wood carver. He would bring his products
into the city and gipoo and selam and apparently was
fairly successful at that. So an entrepreneurial and hardworking guy.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
And that means that he had come to the attention
of enough people that when his description is published by
by Garland, it eventually gets back to these net works
of pro slavery people. So in addition to betting abolitionist
networks in the North, there were also networks of pro
slavery people. They watched for advertisements and helped to track
(11:12):
down fugitive Some of these people were committed unionists they
believed that this was their constitutional duty, and others were
probably more cynical and just realizing there was a business
opportunity there and would put themselves into the employ of slaveholders.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
On the night of March tenth, eighteen fifty four, he
was playing cards with a couple of friends in his home, but.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
A man inside the cabin who has been paid off turncoat,
unlatches the door and in rush the Marshal and his
arresting party. He is eventually manacled put into a wagon
and they then prepare to take him to jail, but
instead of going to Racine, they turn north and head
to Milwaukee. And then what they do is they've actually
(11:59):
brought two wagons, and they send one of the wagons
back to Racine. It's fairly obvious at this point that
they are expecting to be met in Racine, and in
fact this happens, abolitionists have already been alerted by the
time the wagon arrives in Rosine. And this is in
the debt of night.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
One of the friends who had been playing cards with
Glover that evening actually escaped out a window and he
went and began to tell the abolitionist community that Joshua
had been arrested.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
And then they wire they wire Sherman Booth.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Sherman Booth was a abolitionist newspaper editor in Milwaukee, and
they tipped him off to say, there's a fugitive slave
who's been arrested here in Racine. He's been taken to
the jail. Can you confirm this? So Sherman both goes
over to the jail house and they really downplay it.
They basically kind of use weasel words to basically say
(12:51):
that yet no one's been abducted. There's nothing going on
here of any interest. Sherman Booth began to kind of
doubt that he had gotten good information. He ran into
an attorney who had just filed a writ of habeas
corpus on behalf of Joshua Glover, so basically he had
asked for him to be released. So Shumann Booth goes
back to his printing passidy begins to run off a
(13:13):
number of handbills calling people out to oppose the efforts
of the slave catchers to return Glover to slavery. Booth
also gets on his horse and rides through the streets
Paul Revere.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Style, and he yells, come to the courthouse square, a
man's liberty is at stake. Freemen to the rescue. This
is what draws all of these people into the courthouse Square, and.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
A miserable cold March day, five thousand people dropped whatever
they were doing and turned up at the courthouse on
behalf of a man that most of them had never met,
to demand that Joshua Glover be given due process and
ultimately be released. The population of Milwaukee at the time
was about twenty thousand people, so to think about that
(13:57):
kind of a crowd, that kind of a turnout with
truly remarkable.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Now, keep in mind, this was a city that had
suffered an election riot. There were not infrequent riots in
Milwaukee that occurred when you had gatherings just like this.
This was a polyglot city. It had a lot of
Irish immigrants and had a lot of German immigrants, and
to put all of these people into the same space
(14:23):
naturally invokes some anxiety from everybody. And then what happens
is once they all gather in the courthouse square, the
crowd elects a president, and the president then appoints a committee,
and the committee is made up of people from every
ward and then they sit down and start drafting resolutions
(14:44):
that they presented the crowd, and the crowd then discusses
the resolutions and then votes on them.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
In other words, this was not your typical mob scene.
This was not your typical riot with pitchforks and torches.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
They actually behaved very much the way any out of
doors democratic assembly would. And they make a constitutional argument
that as a resident of the state of Wisconsin, nobody
can remove him from Wisconsin except by trial by jury.
And they say that he has a right by the
Constitution to the rite Febuse Corpus, and they set themselves
(15:22):
on those planks. They are going to make sure that
his constitutional rights are respected. They then take these resolutions
to the jailer and to the federal judge who is
overseeing the case, and at the same time they are
working legal angles, and they did this for several hours.
This takes hours, and then we're talking about something that
(15:44):
isn't a momentary thing. Literally. People describe being at the
meeting all day, going home for dinner, and then coming
back after dinner was over.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
But they realized that whoever was not going to be released.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
It's only when the federal judge says that they will
not honor the writ of Avias Corpus that the crowd
springs into action.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
And they grabbed a wooden't beam and they said, this
will make for a fine key, and they used that
key to batter down the courthouse door.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
They are directed by the jailer as to where Glover
is because they start off in the wrong direction and
he doesn't want them to destroy his jail. They break
only the lock on his door, which allows them to
take him out, and they do no other damage to
the jail.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
At that point, the crowd goes wild, like it was
the return of a war hero or something like that.
People were cheering and clapping and shaking Glover's hand and
wiped him to the South side of Milwaukee.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Ultimately he would be taken to a ferry and ferried
to Canada. That is how the rescue happens.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
People in the.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
South were outraged immediately. The legal ramifications for the abolitionists
are clear.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Sherman Booth was arrested, they were jailed. They were also
sued by Joshua Glover's former owner, Benamy Garland successfully sued
because he claimed that they had been involved in stealing
his property. Sherman Booth lost his newspaper business, his printing presses,
and so on. In order to pay off what was owed,
and in the.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Case of Sherman Booth, it didn't actually take part in
the rescue. He had left the meeting at that point,
but he was the.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Most vocal organizer, and there had been similar rescues in
other cities, But the Joshua Glover event was really sort
of a catalyst for bigger developments in the coming days.
Nine days after his rescue, a group of abolitionists met
in a little white school house in Rippon, Wisconsin and said,
we need a new anti slavery political party in this country.
(17:53):
They came out of that schoolhouse calling themselves Republicans.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
I think the story of Joshua Glover is important for
I mean any number of reasons, But to me, the
most important thing is that it is a lesson in
civic activity.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Five thousand people, black and white come together on behalf
of one man, determined to make sure that the American
ideals that they believe in, the founding ideals of the
right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, were going
to be extended to Joshua Glover. It's hard for us
to kind of imagine on any given day just dropping
(18:33):
what you're doing to go out and spend some time
in the cold, acting on behalf of somebody else who
maybe is facing injustice. But then to go that next
step and actually break the law, knowing that you could
be arrested, you could be fined, you could face off
sorts and penalties as a result of your actions, and
still being willing to do that is just an inspiring act.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Every person involved was forced to repeatedly articulate what it
was they were doing and why. They had to articulate
their vision for what the Constitution was, and they had
to persuade all of the people around them that they
were right. And this is democracy, and particularly a constitutional
democracy at its absolute highest. The story of Joshua Glover
in a way doesn't end with happiness because we get
(19:18):
to the civil war, but the actions of the people
themselves articulated a great vision for the United States Constitution
as a document of liberty and a document of equality
that they were able to enshrine. They emerge in things
like the Fourteenth Amendment, the thirteenth Amendment. Things that still
(19:40):
animate are constitutional republic to this day.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
And a special thanks to Robert Baker and to Michael
jar jar Is, the creator of the documentary Liberty at
stake the story of Joshua Glover here on our American stories.
And we continue with our American stories. Up next to
story about an event in American history with profound implications
and a story that's been forgotten over time. You're to
tell the story of the rescue of Joshua Glover, a
fugitive slave. Is doctor Robert Baker and Michael Jarr, who's
(00:30):
the creator of the documentary Liberty at Stake the Joshua
Glover Story. Here's Michael to start us off. At the
moment that would change Joshua Glover's life forever.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
On the night of March tenth, eighteen fifty four, he
was playing cards with a couple of friends in his home.
What he didn't know his former slave owner never stopped looking,
and the slave catchers.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Knock on the door. Glover is societious. He has heard
that there are slave catchers abroad.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
There had been some people snooping around.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
The day before, so he says, don't answer the door,
but his friend unlatched it and the posse swept in.
I came across the story of Joshua Glover in the
Milwaukee County Historical Archives. I was working on industrial tort law.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I believe I first came across his story maybe ten
years ago. There is a plaque in downtown Milwaukee, just
on the corner of a park, and the plaque commemorates
what took place in that square in eighteen fifty four,
and there's just enough there to kind of whet your appetite.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
The short story of it was that he was jailed
in Milwaukee as a fugitive slave and.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Brought to the courthouse which had been in that square
back at that time.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
And his reputed slave owner, a man by the name
of Benamy Garland, had the Fugitive Slave Law of eighteen
fifty to extradite him from Wisconsin to Missouri, and rather
than allow this to happen.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
A crowd of five thousand people.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Broke Joshua Glover out of jail and then arranged for
him to flee to Canada, where he would live the
rest of those days in freedom.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
But in the events of March of eighteen fifty four
were a catalyst for much bigger events, the formation of
the Republican Party, which led to, obviously the election of
Abraham Lincoln, which contributed to the Southern States seceding and
Civil War and eventually emancipation. So I realized, oh my gosh,
there's a domino effect here, and it wasn't the sole event, obviously,
(02:39):
but one of many that were taking place, and we're
really ripping the fabric of the nation apart. The eighteen
fifties were a very turbulent time in America. The Kansas
Nebraska Act passed. People could vote to decide whether they
(03:00):
wanted to be a free state or a slave state.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
And this struck everybody as another capitulation to slaveholders.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
You can't vote to enslave your neighbor.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
All across, especially the Midwestern states, these Nebraska societies pop up.
They're almost like single issue political clubs. The other horrific
event during that same period with Kansas is what happens
in the Senate. Preston Brooks takes a cane to Charles Sumner,
I mean, nearly kills them on the floor of the
United States Senate, which, by the way, followed a long train,
(03:32):
long history of violence in the halls of Congress. There
were outright brawls in the House of Representatives.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Prior to that. As part of the bigger package of
bills adopted in eighteen fifty. Part of that was the
Fugitive Slave Act, which put stronger teeth into the ability
of slave owners to reclaim their slaves.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
You have to understand the Fugitive Slave Act had been
in force in the United States since seventeen ninety three.
This is something that comes up very very early in
American history as a fundamental problem. What are we going
to do now that we have free states and slave
states who share common borders. And the Constitution, of course
has an Article four, a fugitive slave clause. It's one
(04:14):
of the most poorly written parts of the Constitution, and
people start exploiting the weaknesses.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
A lot of states were putting up roadblocks that made
it much more difficult for slave owners to reclaim their
escaped slaves, that would give rights to anyone who was
accused of being a futuitive slave.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
You see more and more efforts by the enslaved to
escape bondage, and you see more and more willingness of
people in northern cities to assist. And so there's a
growing outcry amongst the states of the South that the
Constitution is not being respected, and they demand a congressional
(04:54):
settlement on this, and so Congress in eighteen fifty passes
a new Fugitive Slave and the new Fugitive Slave Act
has several features in it that make it fairly remarkable,
and it's really a novelty in American law. The first
is that it appoints new federal officers to oversee fugitive
(05:15):
slave renditions. The second prong is that they empower the
federal marshals to assist in returning fugitive slaves by giving
them tremendous authority. One of the authorities that they give
them is the power of posse commatatis. It's the ability
to say, during a crisis, I'm calling on all of
(05:39):
you citizens to help me enforce the law. So now,
with the power of possecommatatis, a federal marshal who is
seizing a fugitive slave can essentially conscript anybody around him,
any citizen, to assist him in returning this fugitive slave
to a slaveholder. And that is what really rankles people
(05:59):
in the North. Felt turned them into slave catchers. You remember,
in the North, not everybody was abolitionists, and there were
plenty of anti slavery people who were fine with slavery
so long as it stayed in the South, but they
had deep problems with allowing the slave states to extend
their slavery principles into free territories and into the free states.
Now they're going to become a part of this entire regime.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
How can we be a free state if we are
engaged in returning people to bondage.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
It suspends habeas corpus. It specifically denies fugitives a trial
by jury. It doubles the civil and criminal penalties that
are associated with helping fugitives escape. It was enormously risky.
You could be sentenced to prison, You could suffer a
fine that was crippling, catastrophic.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Back in that time, we're.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Talking about something that would amount to your livelihood. The
civil prosecutions that the fugitive slavac allowed but sometimes go
upwards of ten thousand. If you were a printer, for instance,
that was all of your equipment. If you were a
labor it would be essentially enough to put you into
(07:08):
debt prison for the rest of your life. And they
make federal marshals actually liable for the value of the
claimed fugitives should a rescue take place.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
So they really tried to put a lot more strength
in the ability of slave owners to come up to
the North track down their fugitive slaves, arrest them, have
no due process, and then return them back to a
lifetime of bondage. So that was in the southern perspective
that was a great development, but for people in the North,
like people in Wisconsin, that was horrific.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
And this fed complaints in the northern states that the
fugitive slave law was not just a novelty but patently unconstitutional,
and it was.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Really difficult at the time politically. The Democrats were kind
of seen as the slave party. The Whigs were becoming
more and more ineffectual, and then there were a couple
of other parties and they had abolitionist leanings, but they
were not strong parties.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
And this is all in advance of the midterm elections
that are going to occur in November of eighteen fifty
four at a pivotal point in American history. So Joshua
Glover's arrest is really kind of a fulcrum point. It
focuses national attention again on just how much the slaveholders
(08:23):
have succeeded in bending the Republic to their will.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
And you've been listening to doctor Robert Baker and Michael
jar In Jars, the creator of the documentary liberty at
stake the Joshua Glover story. They can be viewed at
www lastmilm dot com. Go to their website and help
them tell the inspiring story of Joshua Glover to a
(08:48):
national audience. And what we learned here is well, from
a quote, how can we be a free state if
we are returning people back to bond And that's about
as close as it gets to the full summary of
the problems between North and South, specifically as it relates
(09:10):
to the Fugitive Slave Act. When we come back more
of this story, the story of Joshua Glover here on
our American stories, and we continue with our American stories
(09:42):
and with the story of the rescue of fugitive slave
Joshua Glover. Let's get back into the story. Here again
is Michael.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Jar January, first, New Year's Day, eighteen fifty. Joshua Glover
was part of a slave auction on the courthouse steps
in Saint Louis. What a terrible way to start the
new year. A man named Venemy Garland purchased him, and
Venemy Garland had a farm just outside of Saint Louis.
Joshua Glover worked as a slave there for two years
(10:13):
before he decided that he was going to pursue his
own freedom and began to make his way four hundred
miles just a little under four hundred miles to the
abolitionist stronghold of Racine, Wisconsin. There was plenty of work
to be found. It was a burgeoning port city.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
It was actually in competition with Milwaukee.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
And for two years he actually was able to really
live out his dream of freedom. He must have been
a fairly accomplished wood carver. He would bring his products
into the city and gipoo and selam and apparently was
fairly successful at that. So an entrepreneurial and hardworking guy.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
And that means that he had come to the attention
of enough people that when his description is published by
by Garland, it eventually gets back to these net works
of pro slavery people. So in addition to betting abolitionist
networks in the North, there were also networks of pro
slavery people. They watched for advertisements and helped to track
(11:12):
down fugitive Some of these people were committed unionists they
believed that this was their constitutional duty, and others were
probably more cynical and just realizing there was a business
opportunity there and would put themselves into the employ of slaveholders.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
On the night of March tenth, eighteen fifty four, he
was playing cards with a couple of friends in his home, but.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
A man inside the cabin who has been paid off turncoat,
unlatches the door and in rush the Marshal and his
arresting party. He is eventually manacled put into a wagon
and they then prepare to take him to jail, but
instead of going to Racine, they turn north and head
to Milwaukee. And then what they do is they've actually
(11:59):
brought two wagons, and they send one of the wagons
back to Racine. It's fairly obvious at this point that
they are expecting to be met in Racine, and in
fact this happens, abolitionists have already been alerted by the
time the wagon arrives in Rosine. And this is in
the debt of night.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
One of the friends who had been playing cards with
Glover that evening actually escaped out a window and he
went and began to tell the abolitionist community that Joshua
had been arrested.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
And then they wire they wire Sherman Booth.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Sherman Booth was a abolitionist newspaper editor in Milwaukee, and
they tipped him off to say, there's a fugitive slave
who's been arrested here in Racine. He's been taken to
the jail. Can you confirm this? So Sherman both goes
over to the jail house and they really downplay it.
They basically kind of use weasel words to basically say
(12:51):
that yet no one's been abducted. There's nothing going on
here of any interest. Sherman Booth began to kind of
doubt that he had gotten good information. He ran into
an attorney who had just filed a writ of habeas
corpus on behalf of Joshua Glover, so basically he had
asked for him to be released. So Shumann Booth goes
back to his printing passidy begins to run off a
(13:13):
number of handbills calling people out to oppose the efforts
of the slave catchers to return Glover to slavery. Booth
also gets on his horse and rides through the streets
Paul Revere.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Style, and he yells, come to the courthouse square, a
man's liberty is at stake. Freemen to the rescue. This
is what draws all of these people into the courthouse Square, and.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
A miserable cold March day, five thousand people dropped whatever
they were doing and turned up at the courthouse on
behalf of a man that most of them had never met,
to demand that Joshua Glover be given due process and
ultimately be released. The population of Milwaukee at the time
was about twenty thousand people, so to think about that
(13:57):
kind of a crowd, that kind of a turnout with
truly remarkable.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Now, keep in mind, this was a city that had
suffered an election riot. There were not infrequent riots in
Milwaukee that occurred when you had gatherings just like this.
This was a polyglot city. It had a lot of
Irish immigrants and had a lot of German immigrants, and
to put all of these people into the same space
(14:23):
naturally invokes some anxiety from everybody. And then what happens
is once they all gather in the courthouse square, the
crowd elects a president, and the president then appoints a committee,
and the committee is made up of people from every
ward and then they sit down and start drafting resolutions
(14:44):
that they presented the crowd, and the crowd then discusses
the resolutions and then votes on them.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
In other words, this was not your typical mob scene.
This was not your typical riot with pitchforks and torches.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
They actually behaved very much the way any out of
doors democratic assembly would. And they make a constitutional argument
that as a resident of the state of Wisconsin, nobody
can remove him from Wisconsin except by trial by jury.
And they say that he has a right by the
Constitution to the rite Febuse Corpus, and they set themselves
(15:22):
on those planks. They are going to make sure that
his constitutional rights are respected. They then take these resolutions
to the jailer and to the federal judge who is
overseeing the case, and at the same time they are
working legal angles, and they did this for several hours.
This takes hours, and then we're talking about something that
(15:44):
isn't a momentary thing. Literally. People describe being at the
meeting all day, going home for dinner, and then coming
back after dinner was over.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
But they realized that whoever was not going to be released.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
It's only when the federal judge says that they will
not honor the writ of Avias Corpus that the crowd
springs into action.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
And they grabbed a wooden't beam and they said, this
will make for a fine key, and they used that
key to batter down the courthouse door.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
They are directed by the jailer as to where Glover
is because they start off in the wrong direction and
he doesn't want them to destroy his jail. They break
only the lock on his door, which allows them to
take him out, and they do no other damage to
the jail.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
At that point, the crowd goes wild, like it was
the return of a war hero or something like that.
People were cheering and clapping and shaking Glover's hand and
wiped him to the South side of Milwaukee.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Ultimately he would be taken to a ferry and ferried
to Canada. That is how the rescue happens.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
People in the.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
South were outraged immediately. The legal ramifications for the abolitionists
are clear.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Sherman Booth was arrested, they were jailed. They were also
sued by Joshua Glover's former owner, Benamy Garland successfully sued
because he claimed that they had been involved in stealing
his property. Sherman Booth lost his newspaper business, his printing presses,
and so on. In order to pay off what was owed,
and in the.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Case of Sherman Booth, it didn't actually take part in
the rescue. He had left the meeting at that point,
but he was the.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Most vocal organizer, and there had been similar rescues in
other cities, But the Joshua Glover event was really sort
of a catalyst for bigger developments in the coming days.
Nine days after his rescue, a group of abolitionists met
in a little white school house in Rippon, Wisconsin and said,
we need a new anti slavery political party in this country.
(17:53):
They came out of that schoolhouse calling themselves Republicans.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
I think the story of Joshua Glover is important for
I mean any number of reasons, But to me, the
most important thing is that it is a lesson in
civic activity.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Five thousand people, black and white come together on behalf
of one man, determined to make sure that the American
ideals that they believe in, the founding ideals of the
right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, were going
to be extended to Joshua Glover. It's hard for us
to kind of imagine on any given day just dropping
(18:33):
what you're doing to go out and spend some time
in the cold, acting on behalf of somebody else who
maybe is facing injustice. But then to go that next
step and actually break the law, knowing that you could
be arrested, you could be fined, you could face off
sorts and penalties as a result of your actions, and
still being willing to do that is just an inspiring act.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Every person involved was forced to repeatedly articulate what it
was they were doing and why. They had to articulate
their vision for what the Constitution was, and they had
to persuade all of the people around them that they
were right. And this is democracy, and particularly a constitutional
democracy at its absolute highest. The story of Joshua Glover
in a way doesn't end with happiness because we get
(19:18):
to the civil war, but the actions of the people
themselves articulated a great vision for the United States Constitution
as a document of liberty and a document of equality
that they were able to enshrine. They emerge in things
like the Fourteenth Amendment, the thirteenth Amendment. Things that still
(19:40):
animate are constitutional republic to this day.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
And a special thanks to Robert Baker and to Michael
jar jar Is, the creator of the documentary Liberty at
stake the story of Joshua Glover here on our American stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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