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surviving African captives into the Antelope, changed her name to that of the General Ramirez, and stood for the southern coast of the United States, and a market. 

In the month of June, 1820, this vessel, thus freighted, was found hovering on the coast of Florida, with the evident intention of surreptitiously introducing the negroes and effecting the sale of them within the United States. She was there in flagrant violation of two classes of their laws - those intended to suppress the unlawful interference of our citizens in the civil war then raging between Spain and her South American Colonies contending for their independence, and those prohibiting their participation in the slave trade, and denouncing it as piracy.

She was reported to Captain John Jackson, then cruising on the same coast in the Revenue Cutter Dallas, as a vessel of piratical appearance. He, thereupon, boarded her; and finding her full of negro slaves, and commanded by John Smith, holding forth at once a privateering commission from Artigas, and a protection as a citizen and seaman of the United States, he took possession of her, and brought her into the port of Savannah, in the judicial district of Georgia, for adjudication.

Upon this plain and simple statement of facts, can we choose but exclaim, if ever soul of an American citizen was polluted with the blackest and largest participation in the African slave-trade, when the laws of his country had pronounced it piracy, punishable with death, it was that of this same John Smith. He had renounced and violated those rights, by taking a commission from Artigas to plunder the merchants and mariners of nations in friendship with his own; and yet he claimed the protection of that same country which he had abandoned and betrayed. Why was he not indicted upon the act of 15th May, 1820, so recently enacted before the commission of his last and most atrocious crime?

And can we choose but further exclaim - if ever hapless African, kidnapped into slavery by one gang of ruffians, and then stolen by another, and by them attempted to be smuggled into our country as slaves, and by a fortunate casualty brought within our jurisdiction and the beneficent operation of our emancipating laws, was entitled to the blessing of freedom, and the right of being transported under our national protection to his native land, so was every individual African found by Captain Jackson on


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board of the Antelope, and brought within the jurisdiction of this Federal Union. Why were they not instantly liberated and sent home to Africa by the act of March 3d, 1819. Alas! far otherwise was, in the judicial district of Georgia, the disposal of this pirate, robber, and traitor to his country! Instead of being indicted for all or any one of his many violations of the laws of the United States, of nations, and of humanity, he was not only suffered to go at large, entirely unmolested, but was permitted to file his claim, before the District Court of the United States in Georgia, for the restitution to him of the Antelope and all her living cargo, as captured jure belli, by virtue of his commission from Artigas. This claim was, indeed, dismissed, with costs, by the judge of the District Court, William Davis. Smith appealed from that decision to the Circuit Court, the presiding judge of which, William Johnson, confirmed the decision of the District Court, and spoke with suitable severity, not of the wickedness, but of the absurdity of Smith's pretension. And here, and in freely commenting hereafter upon the opinions and decisions upon this case, of these two judges, William Davis and William Johnson, both long since deceased, truth and justice require the remark, with all the respect due to their memories as upright judges and honorable men, that they were both holders of slaves, adjudicating in a State where slavery is the law of the land. If this circumstance may account for the fact, that the ministers of national justice in Georgia slumbered over the manifold transgressions of John Smith, for which he never was prosecuted, it will account no less for that division of opinion in the Supreme tribunal of the Union, which veiled from public examination and scrutiny the reasons of each judge for his own opinion, because, as the Chief Justice declared, NO PRINCIPLE WAS SETTLED. John Smith did not venture to appeal from the decisions of the District and Circuit Courts against his claim to the Supreme Court of the United States. His plunder slipped from his hands; but his treachery to his country for a commission from Artigas, his buccanier and slave-trade piracies, though not even undivulged crimes, yet remained unwhipped of justice.

On the 27th of July, 1820, Captain John Jackson, in behalf of himself, and of the officers and crew of the Revenue Cutter Dallas, filed in the District Court a libel against the Antelope, or General Ramirez, for forfeiture, under the act of Congress of 20th
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