Yeager

At a meeting of the citizens of Trimble County , Kentucky, was held at the Court-House in the town of Bedford, on the 10th of December, for the purpose of instructing their Senator and Representative in the Legislature, to vote for the appropriation of a sum of money to enable one of their fellow-citizens, by the name of Joseph C. Yeager, to carry up, on appeal, to the Supreme Court of the United States, a case which has been decided against him in the United States District Court of Indiana. According to the statement of the case, as given in the preamble to the resolutions, “Yeager was brutally assaulted, beaten and maimed by John Row and other abolitionists at Madison, Indiana, for attending as a witness for the State of Kentucky, on the trial of Delia Webster, who had been arrested for stealing negroes from their owners in Fayette County, Ky.” Yeager instituted a suit against Row and others in the Trimble Circuit Court, and recovered judgment for the sum of five thousand dollars and afterwards brought suit in the Federal Court of the United States for the District of Indiana, which gave judgment against Yeager, because the boat on which Row was at the time process was served on him by the Sheriff of Trimble County , was attached to the Indiana shore, notwithstanding the river was at its very lowest stage. The citizens of Trimble County lay down the doctrine in their resolutions, that the jurisdiction of Kentucky extends to low water on the Northern shore of the Ohio river, and thence they draw the conclusion that the decision of the judge is not law. They say that it would otherwise be unsafe for the people of the South to carry their slaves on the Ohio river.— Eve. Post.

National Anti-Slavery Standard, December 29, 1855