Martyr for Liberty

From Find A Grave: Charles Torrey was a Yale College graduate, class of 1833. He was ordained as a minister at Providence, RI in March, 1837, but shortly after he left the ministry and headed to Washington, DC and worked for a newspaper. He was subsequently arrested for participating in abolitionist activities.

In 1844 he went to Baltimore to live, and to establish a station on the Underground Railroad. He assisted in the escape of approximately 400 hundred Maryland and Virginia slaves.

On June 24, 1844 he was arrested in Baltimore for aiding in the escapes. He was sentenced to six years of hard labor. He contracted and died of tuberculosis at the age of 33 in a Baltimore penitentiary. While on his death bed he was refused a pardon by the Governor of Maryland.

"It is better to die in prison with the peace of God in our breasts, than to live in freedom with a polluted conscience."
Torrey's letter, Feb. 1, 1846