A Conductor on the U.G.R.R. Captured

Startling Developments

  On Saturday morning the Rev. William Anderson, a tall, yellow negro, armed with a carpetbag full of incendiary documents, was captured on the mail boat Telegraph No. 3 by officers Bligh and Powell.  They took him yesterday on the steamer Superior to Carrollton, where his presence is in great demand, a reward of $500 having been offered for his apprehension by the citizens of that place.  This ebony reverend has been engaged for some time in the employ of his white abolition brethren at the North, in running off slave property from this sate to the hypothetical free soil of the North.  He has been particularly attentive to the negro owners of Carrollton and the mouth of the Kentucky, carrying off their slaves in gangs.   Anderson is a class-leader and shouting clergyman in the Methodist Episcopal Church North, and chief of the abolitionists in Madison.  He carries with him the records of the Social Fraternity, instituted in or up river neighbors, and is the grand emissary of that Society to promote human liberty, believing, with the Journal of this city, that all men are entitled to liberty no matter what color.   In the possession of Anderson were found several documents implicating distinguished persons in the North, in the cause of negro-stealing.  When proper, we shall make such exposures as may be necessary.  It is evident that this is but one of a gang of men regularly paid by religious societies at the North to steal our slaves and breed insurrectionary feelings among them.  It is gratifying to know that he has never been arrested in his infamous career.

From the Cincinnati Enquirer, December 17, 1856, reprinting  from the Louisville Courier of the 14th inst.  The pro-slavery Enquirer meant that last sentence in the piece sarcastically.