The slave-catchers, therefore, had recourse to the practice of describing certain black persons, in the Indian country, as their slaves, and demanding that the Agent should have them seized and delivered to him. But the Agent, knowing these claims to be merely fictitious in some instances, paid no attention to them. The claimants, intent on obtaining wealth by catching negroes, and selling them as slaves, complained of the Agent to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, who, on the eighth of February (1827), wrote the Agent, reproving him for his remissness in failing to capture and return fugitive slaves, saying: "Frequent complaints have been made to the Department, respecting slaves claimed by the citizens of Florida, which are in possession of the Indians; all which have been acted on here, in issuing such orders to you as it was expected would be promptly obeyed; * * * and that these proceedings would be followed by the proper reports to the Department. _Nothing satisfactory has been received._"
Thus the Indian Bureau, at Washington, took upon itself the responsibility of deciding particular cases, upon the _ex parte_ testimony which the claimants presented; and the commissioner concluded his letter by a peremptory order to Colonel Humphreys, directing him to capture and deliver over two slaves, said to be the property of a Mrs. Cook.
To this order the Agent replied in the language of dignified rebuke. After stating that one of the slaves had been captured by the Indians, and given up, he says: "but they will not, I apprehend, consent further to risk their lives in a service which has always been a thankless one, and has recently proved so to one of their most respected chiefs, who was killed in an attempt to arrest a runaway slave."[58]
The love of liberty is universal. We honor the individual who gives high evidence of his attachment to this fundamental right, with which God has endowed all men, and we applaud him who manfully defends his liberty, whether it be a Washington with honors clustering upon his brow, or the more humble individual who defends his liberty in Florida, by slaying the man who attempts to deprive him of it. But these views were not recognized by the agents of our Government.