Prigg v. Pennsylvania


Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 41 U.S. 539, was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that the federal Fugitive Slave Act precluded a Pennsylvania state law that prohibited blacks from being taken out of the free state of Pennsylvania into slavery. The Court overturned the conviction of slavecatcher Edward Prigg as a result.
Occurring under the presidency of John Tyler, Prigg v. Pennsylvania weakened the enforcement mechanisms of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 by allowing states to forbid their officials from cooperating in the return of fugitive slaves. But, by asserting federal government authority and responsibility over the area of fugitive slave return, it set the stage for future more stringent laws that would bypass individual state decisions about slavery. Later, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, required even free states to support capture and return of fugitive slaves with their law enforcement, increasing penalties for non-compliance.
Also, by refusing to take judicial notice of the problem of free blacks being kidnapped in free states and sold into slavery, the Prigg decision established an implicit precedent that blacks were entitled to fewer procedural protections than were whites.

Federal law

In March 1789, the Constitution of the United States came into force, having been ratified by nine states. Article IV, Section 2 contained two clauses related to the legality of fleeing justice, creditors, owners, or other agencies across state borders and to escaped slaves, but it did not mention "slavery" directly:
On February 12, 1793, the Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793, the long title of which was
"An Act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters."

State law

On March 29, 1788, the State of Pennsylvania passed an amendment to one of its laws : "No negro or mulatto slave... shall be removed out of this state, with the design and intention that the place of abode or residence of such slave or servant shall be thereby altered or changed."
On March 25, 1826, the State of Pennsylvania passed a further law:
If any person or persons shall, from and after the passing of this act, by force and violence, take and carry away, or cause to be taken or carried away, and shall, by fraud or false pretense, seduce, or cause to be seduced, or shall attempt so to take, carry away or seduce, any negro or mulatto, from any part or parts of this commonwealth, to any other place or places whatsoever, out of this commonwealth, with a design and intention of selling and disposing of, or of causing to be sold, or of keeping and detaining, or of causing to be kept and detained, such negro or mulatto, as a slave or servant for life, or for any term whatsoever, every such person or persons, his or their aiders or abettors, shall on conviction thereof, in any court of this commonwealth having competent jurisdiction, be deemed guilty of a felony.

Background

In 1832, a black woman named Margaret Morgan moved to Pennsylvania from Maryland. There she had been born into slavery and held by John Ashmore. In Maryland, she had lived in virtual freedom but Ashmore had never formally manumitted her. Ashmore's heirs eventually decided to claim her as a slave and hired slavecatcher Edward Prigg to recover her.
On April 1, 1837, Prigg led an assault and abduction on Morgan in York County, Pennsylvania. They took Morgan to Maryland, intending to sell her as a slave. The four men involved in the abduction were arraigned under the 1826 act. Prigg pleaded not guilty and argued that he had been duly appointed by Ashmore heirs to arrest and return Morgan to their estate in Maryland. In a ruling on May 22, 1839, the Court of Quarter Sessions of York County convicted him of violation of the state law.
Prigg appealed to the US Supreme Court on the grounds that the Pennsylvania law was not able to supersede federal law or the US Constitution; the Fugitive Slave Act and Article IV of the Constitution were in conflict with the Pennsylvania law of 1788. The case was Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 41 U. S. 539.
Prigg and his lawyer argued that the 1788 and 1826 Pennsylvania laws were unconstitutional:
As a consequence, they argued, the 1788 Pennsylvania law, in all its provisions applicable to this case, should be voided. The question was whether Pennsylvania law violated the constitutional guarantee of fugitive slave return and the 1793 Act of Congress, passed to implement it.

Decision

Writing for the Court, Justice Joseph Story reversed the conviction and held the Pennsylvania law was unconstitutional, as it denied both the right of slaveholders to recover their slaves under Article IV and the Federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1793, which trumped the state law per the Supremacy Clause. Six justices wrote separate opinions.
Although Story ruled the Pennsylvania laws were unconstitutional, his opinion left the door open for the state to forbid state officials to cooperate in the return of fugitive slaves:
As to the authority so conferred upon state magistrates , while a difference of opinion has existed, and may exist still on the point, in different states, whether state magistrates are bound to act under it; none is entertained by this Court that state magistrates may, if they choose, exercise that authority, unless prohibited by state legislation.

However, state laws could not interfere with a slave-owner's right to go to another state and recapture a fugitive slave by private action, as long as no breach of the peace was committed.
Five of the seven Supreme Court justices referred to the commonly held view at the time that the Southern states in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 would not have agreed to the U.S. Constitution if the Fugitive Slave Clause had not been included. Since then historians such as Don E. Fehrenbacher have argued that there is little historical evidence for this.

Effects

Story's phrase "unless prohibited by state legislation" was a catalyst for a number of personal liberty laws enacted by Pennsylvania and other Northern states. The laws prohibited state officials from interfering with runaway or fugitive slaves in any capacity. Runaways could not be caught or incarcerated by state action, cases could not be heard in state courts, and no assistance could be offered by state officials to those wishing to recapture slaves. The Fugitive Slave Act still stood, but only federal agents could enforce it. This is known as the "anti-commandeering doctrine."
Such an emphatic refusal to uphold the Fugitive Slave Act was viewed in the Southern states as a brazen violation of the federal compact. A constituent complained by letter to South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun that the new personal liberty laws "rendered slave property utterly insecure" and constituted a "flagrant violation of the spirit of the U.S. Constitution".
Increasing sectional tension over slavery resulted in the Compromise of 1850, which covered several issues related to the status of territories acquired in the Mexican–American War: the South allowed California to enter the Union as a free state, but the Northern states would have to agree to a strengthened Fugitive Slave Act that required law enforcement in free states to cooperate in the capture and return of fugitive slaves within their borders.
The South had been forced to look to the federal government for a national solution. The Supreme Court had pledged itself in advance to support such a solution, although aware that many persons in the North would certainly be mobilized against it. In addition, people began to believe that the Court was uniquely qualified to soothe the growing agitation over slavery.
But the Liberty Party platform of 1843 condemned the Prigg v. Pennsylvania decision. It said this ruling nullified habeas corpus protection for free blacks, and took away their "whole legal security of personal freedom".