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74
The Story of a Great Court

Glover made good his escape and was never recaptured. The great "writ of freedom" had failed indeed, but a power more effective than any writ, the righteous wrath of an outraged people, had accomplished the purpose. Now commenced the legal battle which was destined to array court against court, and last until the booming guns of Sumter announced the coming downfall of slavery.

While the negro had thus been permanently released, Booth still remained at his post, and the temptation to bring down upon his head the penalties of the law which he had set at defiance was too great to be resisted. He was arrested for aiding in the escape of a fugitive slave, was examined before a United States Commissioner, and bound over for trial before the United States Court. Bail was furnished, but his bondsmen soon surrendered him at his own request, and the Court Commissioner by warrant committed him to the custody of the United States Marshal. Probably this surrender was for the purpose of instituting the legal proceedings which now began in the State Court. Byron Paine was then a young lawyer in Milwaukee, not yet twenty-seven years of age. He had come to Milwaukee with his father, James H. Paine, some seven years before. The father was a man of ability, a lawyer of some prominence, and so strong and pronounced an abolitionist that he found it necessary, or at least desirable, to remove from Painesville, Ohio, to Milwaukee. So Byron drank in abolitionism with his mother's milk. Possessed of a rare power of language and literary composition, he wrote much for Booth's paper, the Free Democrat, while preparing for the bar. He had not attained great eminence in the profession, though his capabilities were known by some and his sterling honesty and courage by many. The time had now