09b_TRANS_PugetSoundHerlad_Oct5_1850.docx
This newspaper article, entitled “A Slave Case,” was published in the Puget Sound Herald
(Steilacoom, Washington Territory) October 5, 1860. It concerns the escape of Charles Mitchell
from James Tilton, in Olympia, to the Crown Colony of Victoria, through a conspiracy of black
men from Victoria to hide him on the steamer Eliza Anderson.
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A Slave Case
Puget Sound Herald (Steilacoom, Washington Territory), October 5, 1860
The Pioneer and Democrat of last week takes up three columns in giving the particulars
and discussing the merits of the detention of the young slave of Major Tilton in Victoria
by the British authorities. Such conduct on the part of Her Majesty’s subjects is not
neighborly, to say the least of it. but John Bull probably thinks that as the system of
stealing niggers from the South is so often practiced and tolerated in the Northern
States of the Union, there is no reason why he should not practice it here, when
opportunity offers. Those who contemplate bringing darkies here from the South will
therefore take warning. Our proximity to the British possessions on this coast afford
the same facilities to an underground railroad that the Canadas do on the Atlantic.