Alfred H. Stone Collection
Volume: 91

3. A Member of the Bar, The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. Carefully Reported, and Compiled from the Written Statements of the Court and the Counsel (Washington, DC: Printed for the Proprietors, 1836). (48 p.)

Testimony from a trial in which the defendant (Crandall) was charged with instigating a servile insurrection by distributing abolitionist material. A summary inside the front cover describes the case in this manner. “This case may be considered as settling the legal questions touching the rights of the slaveholding population, on the one hand, to protect themselves from foreign influence; and the circumstances, on the other hand, which may bring people from nonslaveholding States into danger of the law, by having in their possession, showing, or circulating, papers and tracts which advocate the abolition of slavery in such a way as to excite slaves and free people of color to revolt and violate the existing laws and customs of the slaveholding States.” The jury found Dr. Crandall “not guilty.” (The collection has another pamphlet on the same topic in volume 61 [no. 31].)