The Rescue of Joshua Glover: A Fugitive Slave, the Constitution, and the Coming of the Civil War. By H. Robert Baker. (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006. xiv, 260 pp. $38.95, ISBN 978-0-8214-1690-7.)

Abstract

H. Robert Baker provides an exemplary case study of the events leading up to the undeservedly obscure Supreme Court decision in Ableman v. Booth (1859). The case began with the liberation of Joshua Glover, a fugitive slave, in Wisconsin. Baker recounts the events surrounding Glover's capture and freeing, but the book's real contribution comes in its account of what happened after Glover left the scene, relocating to Canada. After leading the effort to liberate Glover, Sherman Booth was indicted in federal court for his role in Glover's escape. Booth challenged his conviction not by appealing within the federal court system but by seeking a writ of habeas corpus from the Wisconsin state courts. Directly challenging the supremacy of the federal courts in interpreting the Constitution, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held that it had the power to order federal officials to release Booth and did exactly that. The U.S. Supreme Court unsurprisingly reversed the state court, holding that it could not command federal officials to release Booth even if it believed that Booth's conviction and detention violated the Constitution. In the aftermath, Booth was accused in a case of sexual abuse. He was acquitted, but his credibility was “shredded“ (p. 166). Jailed in Milwaukee, Booth escaped with his friends' assistance and remained at large for two months. President James Buchanan pardoned him on March 11, 1861.