In 1854, a runaway slave named Joshua Glover made his way to the free state of Wisconsin. He was pursued by slave hunters and abducted in the middle of the night in Racine, leading to a group of over 5,000 people from Milwaukee and Racine coming together free Joshua from his imprisonment. Today on WTMJ Conversations, filmmaker Michael Jahr tells WTMJ’s Libby Collins the breathtaking story of Joshua’s betrayal by a friend, the riot that destroyed the courthouse imprisoning him, and how Joshua Glover’s story led to the formation of the Republican Party and the election of Abraham Lincoln. It’s all ahead on this historic edition of WTMJ Conversations!
To watch Liberty at Stake: the Joshua Glover Story, click here.
A partial transcript is provided below, courtesy of eCourt Reporters.
MICHAEL JAHR: The sheriff and a hundred people went up there, and their goal was to basically arrest the owner and the U.S. Marshal for kidnapping and for assault.
So, it’s kind of remarkable, it shows you the mindset of Wisconsinites that a local sheriff felt that he could arrest a U.S. Marshal who was enforcing Federal law because, basically, in the sheriff’s mind, a free man had been abducted and beaten in a free state.
LIBBY COLLINS: How did the authorities react?
MICHAEL JAHR: Well, they blew them off. So, this went on for several hours. And it became clear, again, under the Fugitive Slave Act, officials not only could not release Joshua Glover, they were bound not to release him. So, when that became clear to the crowd, a subsection of the mob decided to take things into their own hands. And so, they went over to the cathedral, which was being built at the time, and they grabbed a wooden beam from the construction site, they took it over to the courthouse, and they used it to batter down the courthouse door. And then they swooped inside, they overwhelmed the guards, they used some pickaxes to basically pull apart the jail cell door. They grabbed Joshua Glover and they bring him out into the larger crowd and there’s just massive rejoicing. One book describes it as though he were a conquering hero.
