ABSTRACT
In the year 1835, Judge Thomas Chinn, of Mississippi, came to this city, and brought with him a slave, for whom it was said he had given fifteen hundred dollars while on his way here. The Judge had been in this city but a few days, before the slave eloped, and was advertised in the papers, with a reward of five hundred dollars offered for his apprehension. Soon after the advertisement appeared, some mischievous person addressed an anonymous note to the Judge, informing him that his slave was concealed by me some where about the store which I then kept, in Pearl street. A warrant was procured, and put in the hands of a well-known slave hunter, by the name of Tobias Boudinot who had rendered himself notorious in that kind of business. Highly elated with the prospect of receiving five hundred dollars, as the reward of his iniquity in capturing the fugitive, he, accompanied by the judge, and a considerable number of southerners, who were here on business, came to the vicinity of my store, and distributed themselves at short distances from one another, in order to arrest him, in case he should attempt to escape. I was in my office, back of the store, unconscious of what was going on. It seems they waited for near an hour, expecting I would go out; preferring to make the assault in my absence. At length, some business called me to a house, a few doors down the street. I had been gone but a few minutes, leaving my son in the store, when four or five persons rushed in; and after looking round and not seeing their victim, sprang out of the back window, from which they jumped into the yard, a distance of about ten feet. Some of them were very near falling into the cistern, which was under the window. My son came immediately to inform me, and I returned without delay. Before I got there, they left my premises, and were searching a book-bindry in the rear, and some other houses in the neighborhood. When the 248inhabitants complained of such unceremonious intrusion, Boudinot informed them that he was looking for a felon; but my son soon undeceived them on that point; which highly enraged him, and one of the party gave him a blow in the face.
