Adding Teeth To The Fugitive Slave Effort

This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 3/15/2018

Imprint titled, “HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES...AN ACT TO GIVE EFFECT TO THE PROVISIONS OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES RELATIVE TO FUGITIVES FROM LABOR FOR THE PROTECTION OF FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR AND TO PREVENT KIDNAPPING”, Harrisburg, Pa. Cameron & Krause, printers, 1826, 7pp., roughly removed from a bound volume, resulting in some paper loss, not affecting text. The Pennsylvania House of Representatives working draft, or "slip bill," of Pennsylvania's fugitive slave law, passed in 1826. Such drafts were printed, double spaced, for draft purposes while legislation was under consideration, and were generally only printed in sufficient numbers for the members on the floor. There is only one other copy of another issue noted on OCLC, but this version seems to be unique. This act makes it a felony to carry off or detain a slave with the intention to sell him/her, punishable by hefty fines and servitude. It further states that the owner of a runaway slave, or his acting agent, may apply to "any judge, justice of the peace or alderman" in Pennsylvania for a warrant to retrieve the lost property. The law also renders it a misdemeanor to "aid, abet or attempt the rescue of such a fugitive," punishable by fines and possible imprisonment. In 1780 the state of Pennsylvania passed an act for the gradual emancipation of slaves, and while slavery was not actually abolished entirely there until 1847, there were only a few hundred slaves left in the state in 1826. The law was not aimed internally, but passed under pressure from neighboring Maryland, since many slaves fled across the increasingly significant Mason-Dixon line into the "free" North. Pennsylvania long maintained that fugitive slave issues were covered by the federal act of 1793, but yielded to Maryland's pressure to create a formal system, though laborious, for slave owners to reclaim their property - the only northern state to do so. In fact, enforcement was increasingly lax, and slave holders took matters into their own hands. In 1837 a fugitive slave from Maryland, Margaret Morgan, had lived in York County, Pennsylvania for five years when a man named Edward Prigg, working for her owner, came to arrest her. Though he had a warrant, the county constable refused to help him, and Prigg forcibly removed the fugitive to Maryland. He was subsequently indicted in York County for kidnapping and found guilty. The case, Prigg vs. Pennsylvania, ultimately found its way to the Supreme Court, where the 1826 law was found unconstitutional in 1842. The repeal of this law left only the 1793 federal law, which was hardly enforceable, and a rising tide of southern demand for a law with teeth. This was ultimately realized in the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 - a path which began directly with the present act. The unique legislative draft version of a law which came to have great significance in Constitutional history and the story of slavery in the United States.

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