Why American Revolutionaries Fought to Protect Habeas Corpus

The United States has recently witnessed challenges to the right to due process and a fair trial, including a recent explicit threat to habeas corpus by White House official Stephen Miller, and the actual deportation and imprisonment of people like Kilmar Abrego Garcia far from home.

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American revolutionaries feared such threats. Among the grievances they laid at the feet of British King George III in the Declaration of Independence was that he was “transporting” American colonists “beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.” The founders believed that government suspension of habeas corpus was antithetical to the basic rights long enshrined in cherished documents like the Magna Carta.

In 1776, these fears came to fruition in the case of American Patriot Ebenezer Smith Platt, a man who was a transatlantic celebrity in his own time but who is little remembered today. Transported across the seas and imprisoned far from home, Platt had his right to habeas corpus—and his freedom—curtailed by what many viewed as the actions of a tyrannical king. His story became a political lightning rod.

Today, Platt is a reminder of the fact that habeas corpus has long been seen as the bedrock of rights to due process under the law. Even British government officials who opposed American independence warned that suspending Platt’s right to habeas corpus posed a danger to everyone. When Platt eventually gained his freedom, it was due in no small part to public pressure from such elected officials combined with the efforts of well-connected friends and constant press coverage.

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About a year before the Declaration of Independence, Platt relocated from New York to Georgia where he became active in Patriot politics. In 1775, Platt was among a group of Georgia and South Carolina Patriots who used an armed American privateer ship to seize the cargo of a British merchant ship—mostly gunpowder, arms, and bullets—on behalf of the Patriot-run Provincial Congress of Georgia.

A few months later, Platt was on another mission for Georgia. This time, he sailed for the French island colony of Saint-Domingue (present day Haiti) to trade for arms and ammunition for Patriot military forces. But his ship was seized by the British and taken to Jamaica. There, Platt encountered Richard Maitland, captain of the British merchant ship whose cargo he had helped seize off the coast of Georgia.

When Maitland identified Platt, British Vice Admiral Clark Gayton seized Platt’s ship, its crew, and Platt, placing him in chains to await trial. The Jamaican court set Platt free, finding that he could not be tried there when the alleged crime occurred in Georgia, but suggested that Gayton might send Platt on a naval ship for trial in England.

Gayton seized Platt again and set sail from Jamaica, keeping him in shackles for months aboard his ship before transferring him to another Royal Navy frigate, which transferred him to a third naval ship headed to England. After months at sea, Platt reached Portsmouth, England, around the time Britons learned the news of the Declaration of Independence. Instead of being sent ashore, Platt was transferred three times from royal naval ship to royal naval ship in the harbor.

The transfers were deliberate attempts to avoid due process. If Platt could not be located, attorneys could not serve his imprisoners a writ of habeas corpus on his behalf, and he could be imprisoned indefinitely.

After eight months imprisoned in shackles aboard six different ships, Platt managed to connect with a sympathetic attorney who asserted his right to habeas corpus and forced his release for trial. Platt finally made it ashore in England. But his timing could not have been worse.  

Platt happened to set foot on English soil just before Parliament passed the Habeas Corpus Act, or Treason Act, of 1777. This legislation empowered British authorities to arrest and imprison people “charged with, or Suspected of, the Crime of Treason, committed in any of His Majesty’s Colonies or Plantations in America,” or “Acts of Treason or Piracy” on the high seas. Platt fit these criteria.

He became one of the first, and best publicized, of what would eventually be hundreds of American prisoners in Britain who would be denied both the rights of habeas corpus and the legal status of prisoners of war. Allowed neither a fair trial nor military prisoner exchange, they would be imprisoned “at the king’s pleasure.” For most of these prisoners, this meant remaining imprisoned until a 1782 Act of Parliament changed their official status.

It is hard to overstate how treasured the right to habeas corpus was in British law by the revolutionary era. It predated the Magna Carta, though it was also enshrined within it. It was the cornerstone of the due process that entitled every person to have their arrest proven lawful; the process that protected people from unjust and indefinite imprisonment. Numerous treason acts had been passed over hundreds of years of English history, but in previous acts, those accused of treason had the right to habeas corpus. The Treason Act of 1777 not only suspended habeas corpus for those accused under the act, it upended hundreds of years of British legal precedence.

On both sides of the Atlantic, people worried about the new precedent for tyranny set by the Act and Platt’s imprisonment. British Member of Parliament Edmund Burke declared that the Act “has this distinguished evil in it, that it is the first partial suspension of the Habeas Corpus which has been made.” British MP John Wilkes, who did not share Burke’s politics, agreed. Like Burke, Wilkes asked whether a government “capable of thus trampling on our most sacred laws” can “be too narrowly watched, too deeply suspected, too strongly guarded against?” Suspending habeas corpus for one group of people threatened tyranny for all.

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Platt went on to spend 14 months imprisoned in London’s infamous Newgate Prison, living in a state of destitution, depending on charity for food and basic necessities. Chief among his benefactors was American wax sculptor and undercover spy, Patience Wright who lived and worked in London. Wright launched a campaign on Platt’s behalf urging influential people like Benjamin Franklin to help him. Even with all his diplomatic ties, Franklin was powerless to assist Platt because of the Treason Act’s suspension of habeas corpus.

Newspaper editors and pamphleteers circulated stories about the horrible conditions in the British prisons holding thousands of Americans. They detailed how starving prisoners resorted to eating anything from snails to grass to the marrow in old bones.

British as well as American voices raised against mistreatment of American prisoners grew louder throughout 1777. The media storm and outraged public response played an important role in securing Platt’s release from Newgate in March of 1778.

Upon gaining his freedom, he married Patience Wright’s daughter and traveled to France, where Franklin helped arrange passage for the couple to cross the Atlantic to the United States. Once there, Ebenezer enlisted to fight for the Patriots, taking up arms against the king that he and many of his contemporaries viewed as tyrannical, not least for transporting Americans to overseas prisons and suspending habeas corpus.

Although he was a Patriot, Platt was no hero. He was an enslaver, a bigamist (he later married a second wife without divorcing his first), and a bit of a grifter (he died owing Daniel Boone a great deal of money).

But the right to habeas corpus did not depend upon good behavior or an admirable character then, nor should it now. The once-famous case of Ebenezer Smith Platt reminds us that widespread attention to acts of tyranny that violate foundational rights is critical to maintaining those rights. Such attention, among the press, among concerned private citizens, and among elected representatives of the people, helped free Pratt. Careful attention to questions of habeas corpus today may inspire similar outrage and action in defense of our most cherished rights.

Zara Anishanslin is a historian at the University of Delaware. Her latest book The Painter’s Fire: A Forgotten History of the Artists Who Championed the American Revolution comes out July 1, 2025.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.