O Say Can You See

The Petition of Cassius Jackson otherwise called Cassius, a coloured man, humbly complaining sheweth unto your Honors that he is free man and entitled to his freedom, and that being so entitled, he on the 25th Inst, filed in the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia for the County of Washington in the said District a Petition for his freedom against a certain Bernard H. Buckner and Aris Buckner who claim your Petitioner as their slave, which said Petition is now pending in and before and remains undecided by the said Circuit Court. That your Petitioner is now confined in the Jail of Washington County & in the custody of the Marshal of the said District, as a runaway. That your Petitioner is informed and verily believes that [strikethrough] the said Bernard H. Buckner and Aris Buckner intend to remove your Petitioner from the County and District aforesaid, and from under and beyond the Jurisdiction of the said Circuit Court, and thereby prevent and interfere with the due administration of Justice, for which purpose the agents of the said Bernard H Buckner and Aris Buckner are now here in the said County of Washington.

In tender consideration whereof, and in as much as your Petitioner is remediless at and by the strict rules of the common law, and can only find relief in a Court of Equity where matters of this sort are properly cognizable, to the end therefore that the Justice, Equity and right of the case may be enquired into; your Petitioner prays your Honors to grant unto him the United States most gracious writ of Injunction, commanding the said   and enjoining the said Bernard H. Buckner and Aris Buckner their agents and Attorneys from removing you Petitioner from the County and District aforesaid, in manner and form aforesaid; and also commanding the said Marshal to detain and keep in his custody and not to deliver up to the said Bernard H. Buckner and Aris Buckner their agents and attorney, your Petitioner, till the further order of this Court, and such further relief in the premises as his case may require, and as in duty bound your Petitioner will ever pray, & so forth.

John J Dermott
Solr. for Petitioner.

Personally appeared before me the subscriber a Justice of the Peace for the County aforesaid Francis Cassius Jackson, the Petitioner in the within and foregoing Bill or Petition named, and after having the said Bill or Petition read and explained to him, and the nature, obligation and penalties of, and oath attendant on the falsely taking of an oath, solemnly made oath that the matters & things stated in the said Petition are, so far as they are stated of to be of his own knowledge, true, and so far as they are stated to be of the knowledge of others, he verily believes them to be true.

Given under my hand this 25th day of Sept. 1833.
B. K. Morsell J.P