A Study in the Origins of Interstate Rendition: The Big Beaver Creek Murders

Abstract

ON March 9, I791, near the confluence of Big Beaver Creek and the Ohio River in western Pennsylvania four Delaware Indians were murdered by a band of Virginians. Political currents thereby set in motion inspired the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery to demand on May I3, I79I, that persons accused of kidnapping a Negro in Pennsylvania be extradited from Virginia. The ultimate result was a congressional bill approved by the President on February I2, I793, entitled An Act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the services of their masters. Thus the Second Congress of the United States under the Constitution very obviously packaged together fugitive criminals and fugitive slaves. Oddly enough, however, from the historical point of view, studies purporting to explain the origins of the statute stress never both but always either fugitive criminals or fugitive slaves. In the classical treatise on interstate rendition, for example, John Bassett Moore found that the abolition of slavery made it unnecessary to discuss any but the criminal aspects of the act.1 Historians, on the other hand, have been almost entirely concerned with its aspects relating to fugitive slaves.2 Consequently, materials have been overlooked and interpretations have in turn lacked the balanced perspective which larger bodies of facts can always supply. Since the act remains substantially unchanged today with respect to fugitive criminals and since its provisions respecting fugitive slaves are of considerable historical importance, its two aspects deserve concomitant development. The story of the murders on Big Beaver Creek is a proper beginning.