One of the ways that the US Constitution baked the institution of slavery into the very core of the new United States was through the fugitive slave clause. The clause required that people who escaped slavery be returned to their enslavers. In parts of the US that didn't want slavery, the clause sometimes went unenforced. Today we'll learn about how Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 to enforce that clause, how enslavers throughout the country used that rule, and the long-term effects of this law.
SOURCES:
Somerset v. Stewart, 98 E.R. 499 (K.B. 1772)
Karen Arnold-Burger, Fugitive Justice: Slavery and the Law in Pre-Civil War America, 46 Ct. Rev. 116 (2009).
Louise Weinberg, Methodological Interventions and the Slavery Cases; or, Night-Thoughts of a Legal Realist Symposium: The Silver Anniversary of the Second Conflicts Restatement, 56 Md. L. Rev. 1316–1370 (1997).
H. Robert Baker, The Fugitive Slave Clause and the Antebellum Constitution, 30 Law & Hist. Rev. 1133–1174 (2012).
Allen Johnson, Constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Acts, 31 Yale L.J. 161 (1921).
John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans (New York: Knopf, 1967).
Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge (New York: Atria Books, 2017)
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/habeas_corpus
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SOURCES
-Somerset v. Stewart, 98 E.R. 499 (K.B. 1772)
-Karen Arnold-Burger, Fugitive Justice: Slavery and the Law in Pre-Civil War America, 46 Ct. Rev. 116 (2009).
-Louise Weinberg, Methodological Interventions and the Slavery Cases; or, Night-Thoughts of a Legal Realist Symposium: The Silver Anniversary of the Second Conflicts Restatement, 56 Md. L. Rev. 1316–1370 (1997).
-H. Robert Baker, The Fugitive Slave Clause and the Antebellum Constitution, 30 Law & Hist. Rev. 1133–1174 (2012).
-Allen Johnson, Constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Acts, 31 Yale L.J. 161 (1921).
-John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans (New York: Knopf, 1967).
-Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway
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