Case Summary

Coley Harris was arrested and jailed on suspicion of being a fugitive from slavery. She declared that she was a free woman and petitioned the St. Louis Criminal Court for a writ of habeas corpus, which was granted by one Judge Lackland. After hearing the evidence, she was released. However, Harris, in consultation with her attorney, was then arrested and jailed for a second time in an attempt to prevent her original kidnapper, Rueben Bartlett, from seizing her again. This time she petitioned the St. Louis Commissioner's Court for a writ of habeas corpus, which was also granted. Upon hearing the evidence, Harris was once again released. Mark Twain believed that Harris had been posing as a slave to avoid punishment for having entered the state as a free Black woman without proper license. See Mark Twain's Letters, vol. 1, 1853 to 1866, eds. Edgar Marquez Branch et al (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 51. (https://books.google.com/books?id=IPgkDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA51)

Case Information

Petition type(s)

• Carceral

Petition subtype(s)

• Fugitive slavery

Outcome

Writ allowed

Fate of bound party

Released from custody

Case Citation

St. Louis Law Commissioners' Court, February Term 1855, No. 106

Source material(s)

Case File

Length of case file

Between 6 and 10 pages

Repository(s)

• Missouri State Archives-St. Louis (St. Louis, Missouri)

State

• Missouri

Tag(s)

• Slavery

People

• Harris, Coley A. D. (Chloe Ann Harris) (bound party)
• Harris, Coley A. D. (Chloe Ann Harris) (petitioner)
• Hempstead, John (respondent)
• Hempstead, John (responding party)
• Hempstead, John (holding party)
• Colvin, John W. (judge)
• MacDonald, Robert S. (petitioner attorney)
• du Breuil, Louis (authority ordering detention)

• Additional parties

  Lackland, (judge)

  Blackburn, George W. (affiant)

  Sweeney, Thomas (enslaver)

  Bartlett, Reuben (kidnapper)