e on the advice of
his executive council may deliver up any person in the province
charged with "Murder, Forgery, Larceny or other crime which if
committed within the Province would have been punishable with death,
corporal punishment, the Pillory, whipping or confinement at hard
labour." The person charged might be arrested and detained for
inquiry. The Act was permissive only and the delivery up was at the
discretion of the governor.

When this act was in force Solomon Mosely or Moseby, a Negro slave,
came to the Province across the Niagara River from Buffalo which he
had reached after many days' travel from Louisville, Kentucky. His
master followed him and charged him with the larceny of a horse which
the slave took to assist him in his flight. That he had taken the
horse there was no doubt, and as little that after days of hard riding
he had sold it. The Negro was arrested and placed in Niagara jail; a
_prima facie_ case was made out and an order sent for his extradition.

The people of color of the Niagara region made Mosely's case their own
and determined to prevent his delivery up to the American authorities
to be taken to the land of the free and the home of the brave, knowing
that there for him to be brave meant torture and death, and that death
alone could set him free. Under the leadership of Herbert Holmes, a
yellow man,[31] a teacher and preacher, they lay around the jail night
and day to the number of from two to four hundred to prevent the
prisoner's delivery up. At length the deputy sheriff with a military
guard brought out the unfortunate man shackled in a wagon from the
jail yard, to go to the ferry across the Niagara River. Holmes and a
man of color named Green grabbed the lines. Deputy Sheriff McLeod from
his horse gave the order to fire and charge. One soldier shot Holmes
dead and another bayoneted Green, so that he died almost at once.
Mosely, who was very athletic, leaped from the wagon and made his
escape. He went to Montreal and afterwards to England, finally
returning to Niagara, where he was joined by his wife, who also
escaped from slavery.

An inquest was held on the bodies of Holmes and Green. The jury found
"justifiable homicide" in the case of Holmes; "whether justifiable or
unjustifiable there was not sufficient evidence before the jury to
decide" in the case of Green. The verdict in the case of Holmes was
the only possible verdict on the admitted facts. Holmes was forcibly
resisting