On August 8, 1850, a hired carriage driven by the unarmed William Chaplin was forcibly stopped on Brookeville Pike, also called Georgia Avenue, by a six-man sheriff's posse from Washington, D.C., led by John Goddard, while Chaplin was carrying two men attempting to escape from slavery: Garland White, who belonged to Senator Robert Toombs of Georgia, and Allen, who belonged to Senator Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia. After stopping the carriage by ramming a fence rail through the wheel spokes, the heavily armed posse shot into it, at least one of the fugitives returned fire before jumping from the carriage and running away, Chaplin was hauled from the carriage and beaten, and both African Americans were slightly wounded, as was one member of the posse. Allen was returned to his owner, and Garland White turned himself in three days later; White later escaped and served as chaplain for the 28th regiment, U.S. Colored Troops, in the Civil War. Chaplin was a leader of the Liberty Party and active in the Albany Vigilance Committee, had come to Washington from New York four years earlier to take the place of Charles Torrey after Torrey died in prison in 1846, and had helped fugitives escape and purchased slaves in order to free them with money provided by the Vigilance Committee. He also arranged the ill-fated 1848 flight from Washington, D.C., of 77 enslaved people aboard the ship Pearl. Because there was dispute over whether his arrest took place in Washington or Maryland, Chaplin was imprisoned in Washington for six weeks and released on $6,000 bond, then imprisoned in Maryland for thirteen weeks and released on $19,000 bond on December 24, 1850; fellow abolitionists raised the bond money, and after his release he left the area, forfeited the bond, and never came to trial.
