Prigg v. Pennsylvania Understanding Justice Story’s Proslavery Nationalism

Abstract

Prigg v. Pennsylvania Understanding Justice Story’s Proslavery Nationalism Paul Finkelman In early 1843 formerPresidentJohn Quincy Adams spent most ofa day “in transient read­ ing the report” ofPrigg v. Pennsylvania,1 “oth­ erwise called the Fugitive Slave Case.” Never one to mince words, “Old Man Eloquent” noted in his diary that the case, consisted of “seven judges, every one of them dissent­ ing from the reasoning of all the rest, and every one ofthem coming to the same conclu­ sion—the transcendentomnipotence ofslavery in these United States, riveted by a clause in the Constitution... .”2 The meaning of the case was clear to Adams and other opponents of slavery: the “slave power” had won another victory. It was a particularly painful outcome for Adams be­ cause the author of the “Opinion of the Court”—Justice Joseph P. Story—was a fel­ low Bay Staterand a professoroflawatAdams’ alma mater, Harvard. Adams’ analysis was wrong on only one minor point: eight of the Justices actually agreed with the outcome, but only six ofthese wrote opinions. The seventh opinion was a lone dissent from Justice John McLean ofOhio. I The Conviction ofEdwardPrigg In Prigg the Court overturned the kidnap­ ping conviction of Edward Prigg, a Maryland farmerwho had helpedhis neighbor, Nathan S. Beemis, seize Margaret Morgan and her chil­ dren, and bring them backto Maryland as fugi­ tive slaves. Pennsylvania’s “Personal Liberty Law” of 1826 required that anyone removing an alleged fugitive slave from the state first get a certificate of removal from a state or local judge. This law was designed to prevent free blacks from being taken South without a due process hearing and sufficient evidence to jus­ tify removing them from the state. Prigg and his companions had violated this 52 JOURNAL 1997, VOL. II law when they took Margaret Morgan and her children out ofPennsylvania without a certifi­ cate issued by a state judge or magistrate. A Pennsylvania justice of the peace had refused to give Prigg a certificate of removal because there was some question as to whether Marga­ ret Morgan was really a slave. Morgan’s back­ ground, and the uncertainty about her status, illustrates the need for a law such as the one in Pennsylvania, to give due process protections to blacks claimed as fugitive slaves. A Maryland farmer named John Ashmore had owned Morgan’s parents, but sometime before 1812 Ashmore allowed the two slaves to live as free people. Although Ashmore, who was Beemis’s father-in-law, never formally freed the two slaves, thereafter he “constantly de­ clared he had set them free.”3 The two blacks raised their daughter Margaret4 as a free per­ son. At his death in 1824 Ashmore owned only two slaves, both of them young males.5 Mor­ gan had neverbeen claimed as a slave, grew up Pennsylvania’s “Personal Liberty Law” of 1826 required that anyone removing an alleged fugitive slave from the state first get a certificate of removal from a state or local judge. Edward Prigg, a Maryland farmer who had helped his neighbor, Nathan S. Beemis, seize Margaret Morgan and her children, and bring them back to Maryland as fugitive slaves, appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that Pennsylvania’s 1826 law violated the federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1793. At left is an abolitionist’s engraving of a woman jumping to her death to avoid being returned to slavery. PRIGGv. PENNSYLVANIA 53 believing she was free, married a free black, and was assumed to be free by most people in the community. She had been listed in the 1830 Maryland census as a free black.6 In the early 1830s she movedto Pennsylvaniawith her free­ born husband. There the Morgans had one or more children, in addition to two bom in Mary­ land. Her children bom in Pennsylvania were free under Pennsylvania law. When Beemis and Prigg came to Pennsyl­ vania they seized the entire Morgan family, and brought them before a justice of the peace, to obtain a certificate ofremoval under the 1826 Pennsylvania law. Given the circumstances of the family, it is not surprising that the justice refused to issue the certificate. At that point Beemis, Prigg, and two other...