Celia, A Slave

Chapter Seven, “Final Disposition,” opens with speculation about the nature and language of Celia’s appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court, written on her behalf by Jameson, Kouns, and Boulware.  This chapter also describes how Celia was removed from jail before her scheduled execution date of November 16, and then returned sometime after, a fact acknowledged by Celia’s attorneys in their letter to the Supreme Court judges sent in support of their appeal.  No one claimed responsibility for her “escape,” but since she was returned after her execution date, it was clearly intended to give time for the court to respond to her appeal, as Judge Hall refused to grant a stay.

Chapter Seven also discusses the political upheaval in Missouri as a result of David Atchinson’s bid for the Senate and the continuing fight over Kansas’s entry into the Union as a free or slave state. During the Free Soil convention in Topeka, Kansas, which met at the end of October and beginning of November and coincided with the weeks leading up to Celia’s first scheduled date of execution and the time when she and her lawyers were waiting to hear the ruling on her appeal, delegates drafted a constitution and an application for Kansas statehood.