lean and
hard,
bad face, and
ugly, not only in form and feature, but expression.” Caphart arrived armed with papers issued by a Virginia court testifying to Minkins’s various owners. The papers estimated Minkins’s age to be twenty-five or twenty-six, his height five-feet-seven, his complexion “bacon color,” and his build “stout” and “square.”
Caphart sought and received an arrest warrant from George T. Curtis, a designated federal commissioner who would later serve as co-counsel to Dred Scott in his appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court. On February 14, the assistant deputy marshal, Patrick Riley, was charged with executing the warrant. The next morning, he sent deputies to Cornhill Coffee House where, with the assistance of a traveling circus worker named Charles G. Forbes, they positively identified Minkins. Although Minkins didn’t resist his arrest, after being escorted across Court Square to the courthouse, a deputy observed him uttering “wild remonstr