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tazzygirl -> RE: Possible rhetorical question, but... (1/24/2012 7:43:21 AM)
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The war was actually started because Southern slave owners could not travel and be assured that their "property" would remain theirs. If a man from Georgia traveled to a free slave state, and his slaves ran away, they states were telling them they would do nothing to retrieve their property.
It is but one of the reasons... but an important one as many saw this as a lack to uphold the Constitution...
The Fugitive Slave Clause of the U.S. Constitution (Article 4, Section 2, Clause 3 Note: Superseded by the Thirteenth Amendment)[1] guaranteed the right of a slaveholder to recover an escaped slave. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 created the legal mechanism by which that could be accomplished
On March 29, 1788, the State of Pennsylvania passed an amendment to one of its laws (An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, originally enacted March 1, 1780); this amendment stated that, No negro or mulatto slave ...shall be removed out of this state, with the design and intention that the place of abode or residence of such slave or servant shall be thereby altered or changed.
On March 25, 1826, the State of Pennsylvania passed a further law, which stated in part:
If any person or persons shall, from and after the passing of this act, by force and violence, take and carry away, or cause to be taken or carried away, and shall, by fraud or false pretense, seduce, or cause to be seduced, or shall attempt so to take, carry away or seduce, any negro or mulatto, from any part or parts of this commonwealth, to any other place or places whatsoever, out of this commonwealth, with a design and intention of selling and disposing of, or of causing to be sold, or of keeping and detaining, or of causing to be kept and detained, such negro or mulatto, as a slave or servant for life, or for any term whatsoever, every such person or persons, his or their aiders or abettors, shall on conviction thereof, in any court of this commonwealth having competent jurisdiction, be deemed guilty of a felony.
These two set up the battle for State's rights.
Prigg and his lawyer argued that the 1788 and 1826 Pennsylvania laws were unconstitutional:
First, because of the injunction in Article IV of the U.S. Constitution that No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due..
Second, because, the exercise of Federal legislation, such as that undertaken by Congress in passing the act of the February 12th 1793, supersedes any State law.
Problem is, that when the Supreme Court voided the PA law, they left PA with a huge back door. Which PA and other northern and western states employed.
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