costs, and as, by the laws of the District, there is no method of
discharging prisoners from jail who are unable to pay a fine, except by
an executive pardon, one would have thought that this might have
satisfied. But the idea that we should escape with a fine, though we
might be kept in prison for life from inability to pay it, was very
unsatisfactory. It was desired to make us out guilty of a penitentiary
offence at the least; and for that purpose recourse was had to an old,
forgotten act of Maryland, passed in the year 1737, the fourth section
of which provided "That any person or persons who, after the said tenth
day of September [1737], shall steal any ship, sloop, or other vessel
whatsoever, out of any place within the body of any county within this
province, of seventeen feet or upwards by the keel, and shall carry the
same ten miles or upwards from the place whence it shall be stolen, _or
who shall steal any negro or other slave_, or who shall counsel, hire,
aid, abet, or command any person or persons to commit the said offences,
or who shall be accessories to the said offences, and shall be thereof
legally convicted as aforesaid, or outlawed, or who shall obstinately or
of malice stand mute, or peremptorily challenge above twenty, shall
suffer death as a felon, or felons, and be excluded the benefit of the
clergy."

They would have been delighted, no doubt, to hang us under this act; but
that they could not do, as Congress, by an act passed in 1831, having
changed the punishment of death, inflicted by the old Maryland statutes
(except in certain cases specially provided for), into confinement in
the penitentiary for not less than twenty years.

To make sure of us at all events, not less than forty-one separate
indictments (that being the number of the pretended owners) were found
against each of us for stealing slaves.