In the discussion Meredith and Hambley appeared for Prigg, and virtually for Maryland. For the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania appeared Attorney General Ovid F. Johnson (under Governor D. P. Porter); and he frankly stated that the real and substantial parties to the controversy were Maryland and Pennsylvania, whose officials came into that high Court “to terminate disputes and contentions which were arising and had for years arisen along the border line between them on this subject of the escape and delivering up of fugitive slaves. Neither party sought the defeat or the humiliation of the other. It was for the triumph of the law they presented themselves before the Court. They were engaged under an imperative sense of duty in the work of peace; and he hoped he would be pardoned if he added of patriotism also.”
Story, of Massachusetts, delivered the Court’s opinion. He had been appointed by Madison, served a long time on the bench and was a jurist of high renown; but Taney, C. J., while concurring in the judgment, expressly dissented from the doctrine that the State authorities were “prohibited from interfering for the purpose of protecting the rights of the master and aiding him in the recovery of his property.” He thought the contrary to be not only the right, but the duty of the State. The Federal Constitution meant this when it declared “the fugitive shall be given up.” He predicted that if the State officials under the State laws could not arrest the fugitive, “the territory of the State must soon become an open pathway for the fugitives escaping from other States.” Justices Baldwin and Thompson concurred with Taney; Wayne with Story, and also Daniel, filing opinions. McLean held that Congress might prescribe the duty of State officers. All seven Justices expressed separate opinions.
Taney’s forecast was right. Maryland and Pennsylvania—especially the southeastern counties of this State—soon became an open pathway for the fugitive slaves. Their track was lighted from many a window in the households of the Chester Valley; and two main lines of the Underground Railroad ran through Lancaster County, close to where the two lines of the great steam railway which traverses it from east to west are now located.
Acquiescing in this decision Pennsylvania, in 1847, repealed the provisions of the Act of 1826 repugnant to the Federal Constitution; and remanded the whole subject to Congress. Like legislation in other States left the slaveholders stripped of the remedies they claimed under the Constitution. Hence the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, with its more drastic processes, manifold deputies marshal, “posse comitatus” of the bystanders, penalties for obstruction of processes and many other provisions—which if they had been tolerable under the conditions prevailing long after 1793, had now become odious to the largely increased and rapidly increasing number of persons who were opposed to all forms of slavery, regardless of its constitutional protection or right at law.
For this class Lancaster County’s then representative in Congress, Thaddeus Stevens, was the boldest and most aggressive spokesman. When, in 1851, he denounced every form of human slavery he was so far in advance of his party (Whig then and Republican ten years later) that in 1861 a Republican Congress, Charles Francis Adams, of Massachusetts, the first Free Soil Candidate for Vice President, heading the “Ayes,” by an overwhelming vote declared that all attempts of the States to override or obstruct the Fugitive Slave Law were unconstitutional and “dangerous to the peace of the Union”; that all enactments to that end should be repealed and there was no authority outside of a State wherein then existed a right “to interfere with slaves or slavery in such States, in disregard of the rights of their owners or the peace of society.”
AN OLD SOUTHERN COOK.
SLAVE AND SERVANT IN THE GORSUCH FAMILY. MORE THAN 100 YEARS OLD.