The year 1854 began with the emergence in Congress of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, which would allow popular sovereignty to decide the issue of slavery in the territories. Echoing other Wisconsin newspapers Booth denounced the bill, and on January 30 he suggested a statewide anti-Nebraska convention at the capitol in Madison. On February 13 at a Milwaukee meeting Booth headed a committee that passed resolutions that were then adapted and adopted by many other anti-Nebraska meetings held throughout the state, including the March 20 meeting in Ripon that resulted in the birth of the Republican Party. On the night of March 10, 1854 Joshua Glover, an escaped slave from Missouri, was seized in his shack in Racine, Wisconsin, by five men headed by his former master Bennami Garland and a federal marshal. Without any explanation Glover was forced into the back of a wagon and taken to jail in Milwaukee. Word of the capture quickly spread and the next morning Booth was informed by telegram. Booth learned the warrant was issued by a federal judge, and went to the jail to apprise the situation. He then rallied on horseback "all freemen who are opposed to being made slaves or slave catchers" to meet in courthouse square at 2 p.m. in protest. Before a crowd nearing 5,000, with some coming from Racine, Booth made clear the dangers of breaking the law, but nevertheless encouraged the mob to show its outrage. After the mob had gathered at the jail, over a hundred Racine men and their sheriff attempted to arrest the federal marshal for assault and battery. The federal judge refused the demands of the mob. After repeated refusals, the restless mob broke through the jail door, and Glover safely escaped to Waukesha. Later, he made his way to Canada via Lake Michigan. Booth did not participate in the rescue himself, but three days later decreed in his paper that the Fugitive Slave Law had been effectively repealed in Wisconsin. Two days later Booth was arrested for aiding and abetting the release of a fugitive slave in violation of the Fugitive Slave Act. Rather than deny his role in inciting the mob action, Booth charged that the law was unconstitutional, and rather than see the rights of a trial by jury nullified he said he would "prefer to see every federal officer in Wisconsin hanged on a gallows." After such inflammatory rhetoric U.S. Commissioner Winfield Smith set Booth's bail at $2000, which his supporters paid immediately, freeing Booth to not only continue his battle against the slave law, but to again editorialize in favor of a statewide anti-slavery convention.