State of Missouri County of Saint Louis } ss By the Habeas Corpus Act.
To the Honorable, the Judge of the Law Commissioner's Court within and for the County of Saint Louis
Your petitioner states that one Elihu Schooner a free citizen of the State of Ohio is imprisoned in the common jail of the County of Saint Louis by the keeper of said jail; that the said Schooner, under the name of Eli Schooner was committed to said jail on a charge of being a runaway slave, by virtue of a warrant issued by Peter W. Johnstone Esquire a Justice of the Peace in and for the said County of Saint Louis a copy of which said warrant is hereto annexed.
And your petitioner further states that the said Schooner is not now and never has been a slave, but was born of free parents in Reed township Seneca County Ohio, about the year 1833 and that he has himself always been a free man and therefore his imprisonment is illegal
Wherefore your petitioner prays that there may issue from this Honorable Court a writ of "Habeas Corpus" directed to the keeper of the said common jail of Saint Louis County and commanding him to have the body of the said Schooner before this Honorable Court on a day therein to be mentioned, then and there to show the time and cause of the detention and imprisonment of the said Schooner, and to do and receive what shall then and there be considered concerning him.
George Denison
