of the persona

before the Prigg d

Prigg decision and the second

oned by the law o

ssachuse

w of the ac

f the personal

ometimes, however, they frankly avowed their aim as a deliberate attempt to interfere with the execution of the United States statutes. In the following examination of these laws, they will be considered first chronologically, and afterward more minutely according to their subject matter. In previous chapters we have noticed many instances wherein fugitives have been befriended by individual

lys

by jury. The Connecticut law, in contrast to the hostile spirit of later legislation, was entitled, "An Act for the fulfilment of the obligation of this State imposed by the Constitution of the United States in regard to persons held to ser

the right of trial by jury." They not only insured jury trial, but also provided attorneys to defend fugitives. This was the

60 a new class of statutes sprang up. The State legislatures seized the opportunity afforded them by Judge Story's opinion, to forbid State officers from performing the duties required of them by the law of 1793, and prohibited the use of State jails in fugitive slave c

mployment of State officers. This change in the statute brought about a corresponding alteration in the State legislation, and we therefore find the acts of this period differing somewhat from those of earlier years. They almost inva

it of habeas corpus; or they enjoined upon the court to which the writ was returnable a trial by jury. At the trial the prisoner must be defended by an attorney, frequently the State or county attorney, and a penalty was provided for false testimon

in Wisconsin,271 Kansas,272 Ohio,273 and Pennsylvania.274 Of the other Northern States, two only, New Jersey and California, gave any official sanction

o restore the trial by jury, on questions of personal freedom." This secured to the prisoner a writ of personal replevin, which was to be issued from and returnable to the Court of Common Pleas for the county in which the plaintiff was

t to the legislature, asking for a new personal liberty law. On the basis of the Prigg decision, a law was enacted which forbade State magis

iding a place of detention, and the court-house was secured. In this year, acting upon a clause in the Governor's message, which treated of the new Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, a co

a two-thirds vote.282 The feeling that it was probably unconstitutional, however, must have strengthened in the next three years: for in 1858283 we find another act which amended the act of 1855. This limited some provisions, and repealed the following sections: the tenth, which required that any person who should give a certificate that a person claimed as a fugitive was a slave should forfeit any State office he might hold; the eleventh, which forbade any person acting as at

the Acts

1855.284 Two years after, however, in 1857,285 a portion of an act declaring free all slaves brought by the

s a slave for any length of time, under any pretence, should be deemed guilty of felony; bu

s the right of trial by jury, but after three years

1848.290 This forbade State officers to take cognizance of fugitive slave cases, and the use of State

years later, forbade the use of jails, and punished State officers for participating in f

asted but a year. Her jails were closed to suspected s

l clauses on the use of jails and jury trial, and imp

nd Kansas also pass

hich the Union was founded.298 The provisions denying the use of State institutions and officers, though distinctly unfriendly, were not unconstitutional. Many of the Abolitionists, however, held the national law to be unconstitutional, and at the same time morally so repugnant that it ought never to be executed.299 The State laws were brought up by South Carolina, in her declaration of the causes of secession, as one of the chief grievances against the North; and President Buchanan, in his Message of 1860,