tted to be an intelligent and
discreet citizen, without any sympathies with the abolitionists, and he
could read one of these pamphlets with as little injury to the public
welfare, as could this court and the many individuals to whom the
District Attorney had been reading them. If the traverser had been
criminal, Mr. Key had been still more so. If Dr. Crandall is punishable
for yielding a reluctant and hesitating consent to the request of
Mr. King to be allowed to take one of these pamphlets and read it, to
what condemnation has Mr. Key subjected himself by forcing these same
tracts, and particularly the worst passages he could select from them,
upon the attention of so many individuals?

But another ground had been taken against the traverser. He was charged
with being a northern man; a native of Connecticut, and a resident of
New York. Have we then, said Mr. Coxe, lived to see the day when in a
court of justice, in the federal city, under the very eyes of Congress,
and of the National Government, it can be urged against an individual
arraigned at the criminal bar, as a circumstance of aggravation, or as
a just ground for suspicion, that the individual comes from the North
or the South, from the East or the West? But we were told, that the
Northern men were interlopers and intruders amongst us. He protested
against the use of such language, especially in the District of
Columbia, which was dependant for its very existence upon the bounty
of Congress, and which owed so much to the liberal policy extended to
it by Northern men. Mr. C. admitted that there were in the North some
vile fanatics, who, under the guise of purity and zeal, had attempted
to scatter firebrands amongst us; men who propose to accomplish the
worst ends by the most nefarious means; men who, under the professions
of christian sympathy and humanity, seek to involve the South in all
the accumulated horrors of a servile war. These men were, however, few
in number and contemptible in resources. On the other hand, there were
men at the South who, for base motives, make themselves auxiliaries to
this excitement, and endeavor to alarm and agitate the people of the
South by misrepresentations of the general feeling and policy of the
people of the North. With neither of these two classes of fanatics had
the people of this District any common interest. As a citizen of this
District, he protested against making it the arena for the operations
of these incendiarie