Tappan brothers biography of albert

Separated from Southern-sympathizing Manhattan, Brooklyn had one of the largest and most politically aware Black communities in the U.S. 

On September 26, , six days after President Millard Fillmore signed the federal Fugitive Slave Law requiring Americans to aid in the capture and return of runaway slaves, two deputy U.S.

marshals arrested James Hamlet in New York City as he was working at his job as a porter. Hamlet, a runaway slave, had fled bondage in Baltimore, Maryland. He had arrived in New York by train in and, with his wife and three children, had settled near Brooklyn in a township then called “Williamsburgh.” Distance conferred only the illusion of freedom.

Hamlet’s owner, Mary Brown, dispatched slave catchers—her son Gustavus Brown, son-in-law Thomas Clare, and a hired agent. In New York, the three presented documents to a federal official who ordered Hamlet arrested and, on the spot, held a hearing at which Hamlet was barred from testifying.

The presiding offi