Review of 'The Captive’s Quest for Freedom: Fugitive Slaves, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and the Politics of Slavery'

The Captive's Quest for Freedom: Fugitive Slaves, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and the Politics of Slavery

Review of 'The Captive’s Quest for Freedom: Fugitive Slaves, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and the Politics of Slavery'

Reviewed by: Making Freedom: The Underground Railroad and the Politics of Slavery by R. J. M. Blackett Christopher Leadingham Making Freedom: The Underground Railroad and the Politics of Slavery. By R. J. M. Blackett. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2013. Pp. ix, 102.) Underground Railroad (UGRR) stationmasters, stockholders, and conductors assisted in the escape of thousands of runaway slaves through much of the nineteenth century. Early histories of the movement, typically written by the descendants of white abolitionists, largely denied agency to both the free and enslaved African Americans who played integral roles in planning and orchestrating escapes. R. J. M. Blackett echoes the work of recent UGRR historians, such as Keith Griffler, to contest this view and demonstrate black agency. He also examines the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law and explains that the legislation shaped the political milieu of the period. The author illustrates how the actions of black and white abolitionists, escaped slaves, and southern lawmakers influenced local, state, and federal policies and shaped the future of both slavery and the national government. Blackett employs vivid examples from the Ohio Valley to demonstrate that the slaves themselves were motivated to escape based upon innate notions of freedom. Those who chose to self-emancipate did so for a variety of reasons. Some hoped to be reunited with family members and friends. Others chose to leave when masters violated informal hiring agreements. The more opportunistic, such as fifteen-year-old Zechariah Mead, followed the example of others and escaped as members of large groups. The author explains that the promise of freedom and the proximity of free land motivated many to forsake the bonds of servitude. Slaveholders sought to limit both the spread of news and the mobility of slaves by passing legislation that prohibited bondsmen from comingling with working-class whites and free blacks. Slaves often devised and coordinated their own escapes. Some that escaped utilized the federal postal system to communicate with and arrange for the passage of family members and friends. Abolitionists such as William Still of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee played key roles in relaying information to those left behind. Blackett maintains that the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law thrust the actions of escapees and those who aided them into the public spotlight. The legislation, a component of the Compromise of 1850, made the recapture and rendition of slaves a national matter. Extensive resistance to the law amplified sectional tensions and encompassed the larger debates concerning slavery and the unity of the national government. Free-born African Americans and their white northern allies united to oppose the law and assist fugitive slaves in their pursuit of freedom. Some in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, launched a committee to aid escapees as they passed through the city. The author demonstrates that the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law led to a rash of kidnappings across [End Page 90] southeastern Pennsylvania that heightened tensions between the Pennsylvania and Maryland state governments. Public opinion widely favored the continued enforcement of the law and the legislation proposed in the Pennsylvania legislature sent a clear message that runaways were not welcome in the state. Escapes highlighted the vulnerability of the slave system. Southern slaveholders were skeptical that slaves acted on their own behalf. Local and regional newspapers hastily drew links between escapees and those free blacks and whites suspected of harboring abolitionist sentiment. Blackett demonstrates that such connections were not so farfetched. Northern abolitionists frequently traveled south under the guise of legitimate business ventures to help fugitive slaves escape from the region. Their actions created much suspicion among slaveholders and heightened the ambiguity of the UGRR. The author explains that some slave masters created defensive organizations to stem the tide of slave escapes. In Kentucky, slaveholders from Boone, Mason, Pendleton, and Bracken Counties gathered in November 1852 to inventory members’ slaves and establish a recapture fund. Others called for a boycott of all northern manufactures and even considered the expulsion of free blacks from the South. However, southerners proved unable to stem the tide of slave escapes despite their best efforts. R. J. M. Blackett effectively illustrates the powerful social and political transformations wrought by the 1850...

The Captive's Quest for Freedom: Fugitive Slaves, the 1850s Fugitive Slave Law, and the Politics of Slavery by R. J. M. Blackett

The Captive's Quest for Freedom: Fugitive Slaves, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and the Politics of Slavery

Coming in at almost 500 pages of text, this is by any standards an impressively weighty tome, in all respects. Based on a quite phenomenal amount of primary evidence, dredged from obscure newspaper...

The Captive's Quest for Freedom: Fugitive Slaves, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and the Politics of Slavery by R. J. M. Blackett

Making Freedom: The Underground Railroad and the Politics of Slavery R. J. M. Blackett. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013.This compact and highly-readable book focuses on cases of escapes from slavery in the years surrounding the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. Despite the uniqueness of the time period leading up to the Civil War, today's readers will see striking similarities between the events described in this book and modern American culture, most notably, a bitterly divided public and polarizing political debates which are carried out in the media.The volume's three main chapters address, respectively, a case study of the flight and attempted recapture of a slave (Henry Banks) from Virginia, the handling- and effects-of multiple Pennsylvania cases pertaining to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and the struggles between fugitive slaves and their allies and those who sought to preserve slavery. The author assumes that the reader has rudimentary knowledge of the Underground Railroad, the Fugitive Slave Law, and the geography of slavery in the US.Blackett builds a strong case for viewing fugitive slaves as self-motivated agents actively and ardently pursuing liberty, preferring to live free under threat of recapture and punishment than to continue living under slavery. The author emphasizes that while there were whites and free black people assisting fugitives at many points along the path to freedom, we should not underestimate the efforts and determination of the fugitive slaves themselves. Blackett hints that early works on this subject placed too much emphasis on the roles played by white Quakers; he prefers to follow more recent works which give proper recognition to the escapees.Additionally, author weaves an argument which ties the actions of escapees to national and international political debates over slavery, showing how the pursuit and recapture of fugitive slaves under the Fugitive Slave Act led to much-publicized legal proceedings that media in free and slave states used to inflame passions on the issue. Large numbers of local residents often involved themselves in these trials, which made for bigger media coverage. In the case of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where slavery sympathizer Richard McAllister had been appointed to oversee fugitive slave cases in the area, years of perfunctory rulings in favor of slave owners led to such negative public sentiment that after McAllister left the job in disgrace, no one else would replace him. …

Reviewed by: Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad by Eric Foner Sharon A. Roger Hepburn Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad. By Eric Foner. (New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company, 2015. Pp. [xviii], 301. $26.95, ISBN 978-0-393-24407-6.) After more than a century and a half, the Underground Railroad is emerging from the shadows of myth, exaggeration, and misinformation. Several recent studies have augmented the scholarly discussion of the Underground Railroad in the decades before the American Civil War. Eric Foner’s Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad is a noteworthy contribution to this scholarship. Gateway to Freedom is primarily a study of fugitive slaves and the Underground Railroad in New York City, although other parts of the northeastern network of the Underground Railroad are discussed. In addition to chronicling the function and challenges of the Underground Railroad, Foner puts it in the context of the larger abolition movement. He [End Page 155] expands the definition of the Underground Railroad by establishing that there was more to it than assisting fugitives in their flight from slavery. Defending fugitive slaves in court, raising money to fund escapes and purchase freedom for some, and advocating political and legal action against slavery were all activities within the Underground Railroad movement. A broader context for Foner’s discussion is the national debate relating to fugitive slaves and its role in the impending secession crisis. Foner adeptly argues that the Underground Railroad figured prominently in the politics of slavery and freedom in antebellum America and that any discussion of the origins of the Civil War must include such resistance and activism of fugitive slaves and abolitionists. One factor that has frustrated scholars and has been a hindrance to more accurately exposing the nature of the Underground Railroad is a lack of extant records of the activities making up the fugitive slave network. For obvious reasons, many of those actively involved in the illegal actions of assisting and harboring fugitive slaves either did not keep records or destroyed them, leaving scholars with little material with which to reconstruct the workings of the Underground Railroad. An exception is Sydney Howard Gay, editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard and a key operative in the Underground Railroad for two decades. Gay maintained a record of over two hundred fugitives and the assistance provided to them as they passed through New York City. This document is the foundation on which Foner developed Gateway to Freedom. Foner supplements Gay’s record with William Still’s chronicle of escaped slaves passing through Philadelphia and other accounts of Underground Railroad activity. This combination of previously untapped sources and well-known accounts makes the sometimes shadowy existence of the Underground Railroad more solid. As Foner explains, a great deal about the Underground Railroad was not underground at all. Some abolitionist groups made little secret of assisting runaways. Their pamphlets, periodicals, and annual reports often openly discussed the assistance given to runaway slaves. Donation parties, bake sales, and other common fund-raisers in northern towns and cities raised money to support their efforts. Some politicians flagrantly ignored their constitutional and legal responsibilities by openly encouraging and assisting Underground Railroad activity. The Underground Railroad emerges from Foner’s and other recent studies as a system that, at its core, was about groups of individuals and local networks interlocked with each other to help spirit slaves to safety. Foner shows the formal and informal network of operatives and the often winding routes of the path to freedom. Gateway to Freedom portrays an Underground Railroad that was the work not of whites or blacks, but of both working together in an example of biracial cooperation. Gateway to Freedom is an excellent example of a historical narrative for public consumption. Foner provides vivid details about dozens of stirring escapes and brings readers the story of the Underground Railroad on a human level. [End Page 156] Sharon A. Roger Hepburn Radford University Copyright © 2016 The Southern Historical Association

Book Review| April 01 2017 Aiming for Pensacola: Fugitive Slaves on the Atlantic and Southern Frontiers Aiming for Pensacola: Fugitive Slaves on the Atlantic and Southern Frontiers. By Matthew J. Clavin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. 272 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $35 (cloth). Nathaniel Millett Nathaniel Millett Saint Louis University Nathaniel Millett is Associate Professor of History at Saint Louis University. He holds a BA/MA from Edinburgh University and a PhD from Cambridge University. Millett is the author of The Maroons of Prospect Bluff and their Quest for Freedom in the Atlantic World (University Press of Florida, 2013), which won four prizes. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic History (2017) 36 (3): 106–107. https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerethnhist.36.3.0106 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Nathaniel Millett; Aiming for Pensacola: Fugitive Slaves on the Atlantic and Southern Frontiers. Journal of American Ethnic History 1 January 2017; 36 (3): 106–107. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerethnhist.36.3.0106 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of American Ethnic History Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2017 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2017 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Reviews You do not currently have access to this content.

Reviewed by: Slavery’s Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons by Sylviane A. Diouf, and: The Maroons of Prospect Bluff and Their Quest for Freedom in the Atlantic World by Nathaniel Millett John S. Sledge Slavery’s Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons. By Sylviane A. Diouf . New York University Press , 2014 . 393 pp. $29.95 ISBN 978-0-8147-2437-8 . The Maroons of Prospect Bluff and Their Quest for Freedom in the Atlantic World. By Nathaniel Millett . University Press of Florida , 2013 . 345 pp. $74.95 . ISBN 978-0-8130-4454-5 . In March of 1856, the magazine writer and illustrator David Hunter Strother, better known as Porte Crayon, was deep in the Great Dismal Swamp working on a story. The watery wilderness straddling the Virginia-North Carolina border was a forbidding place, long known as a refuge for runaway slaves, or maroons. As he explained in his subsequent article for Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Strother was anxious “to see one of those sable outlaws” for himself. Accordingly, he struck out from a logging canal and labored through the underbrush until he became exhausted and fell to his knees. Within moments, he heard a rustle, and before him appeared “a gigantic negro with a tattered blanket wrapped about his shoulders, and a gun in his hand. His head was bare, and he had little other clothing than a pair of ragged breeches and boots.” Simultaneously thrilled and alarmed, Strother noted the man’s “purely African features” and expression of “mingled fear and ferocity,” before he melted back into the forest. But the memory was powerful enough for the illustrator to produce an evocative sketch. When the black bargehands back at the canal saw the drawing, they began talking about “Osman,” but when Strother quizzed them they disavowed any knowledge of the enigmatic figure. Throughout the antebellum era, white Southerners were obsessed with the problem of maroons. Maroons were the fugitive slaves who chose to remain in the South, sometimes only a stone’s throw from the domiciles of their owners, rather than flee north. They did this to [End Page 292] stay near loved ones and sources of sustenance or to avoid the risks of a lengthy journey into free territory. Surprisingly, given how large maroons loomed in the Southern imagination and the numerous contemporary references to them in diaries, letters, and court records, there have been relatively few books about their experience in the United States. Happily, Sylviane A. Diouf has now redressed the imbalance with Slavery’s Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons. Diouf, a curator at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black History of the New York Public Library, is the author of several previous books, including Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America (2007) and Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (2013). She is a gifted scholar and a wonderful writer with no patience for exotic interpretations of fact. “The people whose stories are the subject of this book,” Diouf writes, “went to the Southern woods to stay.” (1) They were predominantly male, she notes, but there were women and children, too, and sometimes entire families, indomitable, determined souls who preferred the dangers of free maroon life to the humiliation and violence of chattel bondage. Their exact numbers are unknowable, of course, but at any given time probably in the low thousands. Diouf divides these people into two categories—borderland maroons and hinterland maroons. Borderland maroons were those individuals who lived very close to the plantations, towns, and cities where they had previously been held, whereas hinterland maroons, like Osman, fled farther afield, preferring to isolate themselves as much as possible from white society and the chance of betrayal and discovery. In order to sustain themselves, borderland maroons resorted to frequent plunder of the farms and plantations in their vicinity and were a continual trial to authorities. Diouf notes that the earliest legislation to deal with maroons was “An Act for suppressing outlying Slaves,” passed in 1691. According to this act, the maroons “hid and lurk[ed] in obscure places killing hoggs [sic] and...

Reviewed by: Fugitive Justice: Runaways, Rescuers, and Slavery on Trial, and: Fugitive Slave on Trial: The Anthony Burns Case and Abolitionist Outrage Arthur T. Downey (bio) Fugitive Justice: Runaways, Rescuers, and Slavery on Trial. By Steven Lubet. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010. Pp. 367. Cloth, $29.95.) Fugitive Slave on Trial: The Anthony Burns Case and Abolitionist Outrage. By Earl M. Maltz. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010. Pp. 174. Cloth, $34.95; paper, $17.95.) Four days after adopting its Ordinance of Secession, the same South Carolina Convention issued its Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union. The underlying principle was "the law of compact," according to which, if one party to a contract "fails to perform a material part of the agreement," the aggrieved party is released from its obligation. The "proof " that fourteen northern states failed to meet their obligations under Article IV of the Constitution—requiring the rendition of fugitive slaves—was laid out [End Page 90] in the declaration's longest section. Because of this failure regarding fugitive slaves, the compact was "deliberately broken" and South Carolina was released from its obligations. In his first inaugural, lawyer Lincoln destroyed South Carolina's "law of compact" argument—all the parties to the contract, he said, had to agree to its rescission. Then, he jumped headlong into the fugitive slave issue, about which, he acknowledged, there was "much controversy." He urged his northern listeners to abide by the fugitive slave law, rather than hope it might be found unconstitutional. Lincoln reminded the South that, if the sections separated, the North would no longer surrender fugitive slaves as it did, however imperfectly. There was much at stake in how the Fugitive Slave Act was interpreted, not only in southern statehouses and at the White House but in courtrooms throughout the North. The two works under review here bring new attention to the topic. Steven Lubet's Fugitive Justice is essential to exploring the issues surrounding the implementation of the Fugitive Slave Act. Of the 191 known proceedings under that act, the author selected three fugitive slave trials: the 1851 "Christiana slave riot" trial in Pennsylvania (the largest treason trial in U.S. history); the dramatic 1854 Boston trial of the escaped slave Anthony Burns; and, finally, the 1858-59 trials in Ohio of thirty-seven Oberlin rescuers of a Kentucky fugitive. Lubet, who directs the Bartlit Center for Trial Strategy at Northwestern University Law School, carefully traces the changing nature of defense counsels' strategy, as it evolved from an acceptance of the legitimacy of the Fugitive Slave Act (Christiana), to acceptance of resistance (Burns), to flat-out disobedience based on a "higher law" (Oberlin). The enactment of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 influenced this change, for if the slave-owning South was no longer barred from westward expansion, why should abolitionists feel bound by the fugitive slave law that had been the key part of the Compromise of 1850? Along the way, Lubet explains how antebellum trial practice differs from today's, in that judges enjoyed great latitude in their jury charges, defendants were disqualified from testifying on their own behalf, and defense lawyers had no opportunity to obtain witness statements in advance. He puts the reader in the position of a juror, a prosecutor, a judge, and defense counsel, and succeeds in making the issues human and real. Readers might have found it useful had he included the text of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and the author might have spent more time on the March 1859 case Ableman v. Booth, which exposed all the issues with fugitive slave rendition, but these are minor quibbles. [End Page 91] Earl M. Maltz focuses exclusively on the Boston trial of Anthony Burns in Fugitive Slave on Trial. The book is a departure for Maltz, a constitutional scholar at Rutgers Law School, and scholarly readers will miss the footnotes. The author brings his talents to bear in presenting the broad context of the Burns case. While he covers the same ground as Lubet, Maltz digs deeper into the fate of the federal commissioner...

Eight slaves – Edmund aged 37, Isaac, 34, Joseph and Bernard both 26, William 24, Theodore 23, another named Joseph, 22 and the youngest Henry 18 – fled the Valle lead mines at Ste Genevieve, Misso...

Reviewed by: Blacks on the Border: The Black Refugees in British North America, 1815–1860 Douglas M. Haynes Blacks on the Border: The Black Refugees in British North America, 1815–1860. By Harvey Amani Whitfield. Burlington: University of Vermont Press, 2006. 200 pp. $65.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper). The African diasporas represent one of the most significant historical phenomena involving the mass movement of humans across time and space. Framed by the Atlantic slave trade and chattel slavery in the Americas, historians have documented the presence of African people in North America with considerable insight and erudition. By attending to the geography, range of labor regimes, social institutions, and politics of slavery, they have detailed the experience of black people as racialized subjects in the context of white supremacy. At the same time, the orientation of this literature in relation to the nation-state [End Page 117] has overshadowed the experience of bonded people who contested the boundaries of slavery through emigration. This is the case of black refugees in British North America between 1815 and 1860. Although the black presence in the British Empire predated the Revolutionary War, their numbers grew as British officials on the ground used the promise of freedom to encourage bonded blacks to defect in 1776 and again during the war of 1812. Britain and its territory became a symbolic and practical destination for freedom when Parliament abolished the trade in slaves in 1807 and slavery in 1833. The United States Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 only reinforced the perception of Canada as this new law mandated federal authorities to participate in the return of fugitive slaves to owners. Indeed, during the antebellum period black settlement patterns shifted from the east to west in British Canada as their numbers grew. One of the most important contributions of this study by Harvey Amani Whitfield is that it dismantles the myth that British North America was a multicultural oasis. In Nova Scotia, slavery was for all practical purposes outlawed, but not antiblack racism. During and after the War of 1812, black refugees faced daunting hurdles, including a poorly planned and executed refugee policy. These conditions reflected not only the limited competency of the colonial government but also persistent racialized hostility to their presence. Officials encouraged emigration to Trinidad while legislators attempted to prohibit any further immigration. For those who remained, the resettlement farms and grudging freehold grants provided at best a modest foundation for a permanent life and settlement. Just as emigrating was a political act, so too was the act of building a community. Individual and collective petitions for freeholds generated a legal consciousness as did voting in local elections and public displays of loyalty to the Crown affirm membership in the larger polity. The church and societies were central in creating a space in civil society and a distinctive public identity for refugees and their descendants. The African Baptist Church in Halifax, the African Baptist Association, and the African Abolition Society, of course, were not without fault lines of social tension and sites of political conflict. They, nonetheless, afforded social spaces for fellowship, leadership, and community for transforming their future. If Whitfield’s discussion tells us anything, it is that the agency of the black refugee community was not bounded by British North America. They moved back and forth across the boundaries of the black Atlantic. Their movement operated in overlapping and competing registers of the personal, cultural, and political that connected them to family, friends, and the fraternity of struggle. Still, even as abolitionist activity [End Page 118] linked refugees with bonded blacks in the United States, they drew distinctions. Rather than designating their civil and social organizations “black” or “colored” as in the United States, refugee organizations usually adopted “African.” This terminology in cultural terms underscored a powerful affinity with Africa for recent arrivals and descendants alike. In political terms, it distinguished black refugees as subjects of the Crown from the status of bonded blacks and thereby laid a foundation for equal rights in the empire. The struggle in Nova Scotia and elsewhere in the Atlantic world would remain a major preoccupation of black refugees and their descendants. Douglas M. Haynes University...

Enforcing the Fugitive Slave Acts in the South:Federalism, Irony, and the Conflict of Jurisdictions, 1787–1861 Alice L. Baumgartner (bio) In 1853, a runaway slave from Maryland named George Smith was caught in Pennsylvania.1 Under the terms of the new Fugitive Slave Act that Congress had passed three years earlier, Smith was not entitled to a jury trial. Instead, the act authorized federal magistrates, "upon satisfactory proof being made," to grant certificates that empowered slaveholders to "pursue and reclaim" any "person held to service or labor in any State or Territory of the United States" who "shall hereafter escape into another State or Territory of the United States." Fugitive slaves could not testify in their own defense or dispute their detention in court—the basic right of habeas corpus. The commissioners' decisions could not be appealed.2 In accordance with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, George Smith's captors hauled him before a federal magistrate in Philadelphia. But before the magistrate could sign the certificate for Smith's removal, a writ of habeas corpus arrived from the Philadelphia County Court of Quarter Sessions. George Smith had been earlier indicted for assault and battery. The writ ordered the U.S. marshal to deliver the fugitive slave to the county sheriff, who would bring him to the state courthouse. The federal [End Page 475] magistrate had to decide whether to return Smith to his captors or to the Court of Quarter Sessions. More broadly, the order raised the question: did Pennsylvania criminal law take precedence over the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850? The magistrate had good reason to uphold the Fugitive Slave Act and return Smith to his Maryland captors. Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, in what is commonly known as the supremacy clause, stated that federal laws should take precedence over state laws. In addition, the United States Supreme Court had denied in 1842 the constitutionality of "any state law or regulation which interrupts, limits, delays, or postpones the rights of the owner to the immediate command of his service or labor." The federal magistrate returned George Smith to his owner, in accordance with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.3 George Smith's fate—and that of other runaways north of the Mason-Dixon Line—is well known to scholars of slavery and the antebellum United States.4 But scholars have largely ignored how the law worked in the South—a significant oversight given that the vast majority of fugitive slaves never crossed the Mason-Dixon Line.5 This omission is based on the reasonable assumption that southern whites were so [End Page 476] committed to the institution of slavery that they returned runaways to their owners as a matter of course. But like the nonslaveholding states, slaveholding states did pass laws that sometimes conflicted with slaveholders' constitutional right to recover their fugitive slaves.6 One such law was at issue in another fugitive slave case, which resembled George Smith's in every particular except where the runaway was caught. In 1852, a fugitive slave named Solomon Smith was captured in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana. But before he could be returned to his owner, he was charged with "firing at and wounding, with intent to kill, Mr. Wm. Hungerford," while Hungerford was attempting to capture Smith and a number of other "runaway rascals who [had] for months infested" the parish. This case exposed what historian Ariela J. Gross calls the "double character" of slavery: on the one hand, enslaved people were persons, capable of committing crimes and standing trial for them; on the other, they were property, destined to be returned to their owners. The question before the court was whether Solomon Smith should be returned, as property, to his owner or tried, as a person, for his crimes. Although Solomon Smith committed a similar crime as George Smith (no relation), the court in Louisiana reached the opposite decision from the magistrate in Pennsylvania. In Louisiana, the right of a slaveholder to recover his property appeared not to take precedence over state criminal law. Solomon Smith was tried and sentenced to be hanged.7 Criminal statutes were not the only state...