• By the late 1820s, New York’s and Pennsylvania’s gradual emancipation laws had been in place for several decades and slavery had been almost completely eliminated.  Citizens in both states voiced increasing opposition to slavery, although their economic connections with the South acted as a mild check on such sentiment. 

• This opposition surfaced in the form of “personal liberty” laws, which prohibited local citizens and officials from helping slaveowners and federal authorities recapture runaway slaves.  Mid-Atlantic courts were cool to such laws, and the U.S. Supreme Court struck these laws down in Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842).  But opposition to slavery and slavecatching grew steadily, particularly as the Civil War approached, and the courts increasingly reflected that opposition.

Early fugitive cases: 

Respublica v. Richards – Pennsylvania, 1795 (2 Dallas 224); Jack v. Martin – New York 1834-35 (Supreme Court, 12 Wendell 311; affirmed, Court of Errors and Appeals, 14 Wendell 507); State v. Sheriff of Burlington – New Jersey, 1836 (unpublished)

• The Pennsylvania and New York supreme courts, choosing to favor federalism over antislavery sentiment, both held that under the compact made between the North and South in the U.S. Constitution, northern states were obligated to assist federal authorities in recapturing fugitive slaves.  Pennsylvania reached this result very early in Richards, at Chief Justice Thomas McKean’s urging.  In Jack, New York’s highest court agreed (over the opposition of Chancellor Reuben Walworth) and rejected the state’s personal liberty law.  The U.S. Supreme Court later overturned all personal liberty laws in Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842). 

• But surprisingly, in Sheriff of Burlington the New Jersey supreme court went the other way, even though New Jersey was the most conservative of the mid-Atlantic states in its attitude toward  slavery.  The court, speaking through Chief Justice Joseph Hornblower, agreed with Walworth that the federal government had no power to compel the states to help it capture fugitives, and went further by suggesting that the federal fugitive slave law was unconstitutional because it denied slaves a jury trial.  The court decided not to publish its decision for fear of triggering a general wave of opposition to federal authority in New Jersey, but abolitionists became aware of Hornblower’s opinion and used it to good political effect as northern opposition to slavery mounted in the 1850s.

New Jersey’s lag in abolishing slavery: 

State v. Post – New Jersey, 1845 (20 N.J.Law 368 )

• In 1844 New Jersey enacted a new constitution, providing in its bill of rights that:  “All men are by nature free and independent and have certain natural and unalienable rights, [including] … life and liberty.”  Abolitionists then tried to persuade New Jersey’s supreme court that this clause abolished slavery, but in Post they failed:  the court held that if the constitution’s authors had intended to abolish slavery they would have said so, and that the state’s 1804 law providing for gradual abolition was still in effect.   

Later fugitive cases: 

Kauffman v. Oliver – Pennsylvania, 1849 (10 Pa. 514); Lemmon v. People – New York, 1860 (20 N.Y. 562)

• Antislavery sentiment grew rapidly in the North after 1845, and courts in the mid-Atlantic states sometimes expressed that sentiment .  In Kauffman, Pennsylvania’s supreme court grudgingly accepted the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Prigg that states must assist federal authorities in recapturing fugitive slaves, but it refused to allow slaveowners to sue Pennsylvanians for aiding slaves to escape.

• The question of whether slaves who traveled with their masters into free states thereby became free vexed northern and southern courts alike for several decades before the Civil War.   At first, many courts held that slaves remained in bondage unless it was clear the master intended to keep them on free soil indefinitely.  But as northern antislavery feelings intensified, some northern courts reversed course and held that slaves would be presumed free unless their master removed them from the state quickly. 

• In Lemmon, New York’s highest court took the new presumption to its limit by holding that any slave coming into New York instantly became free.  The court reasoned the only logical alternative was to hold that slaves brought into New York would remain in bondage indefinitely, which would be intolerable:  it would make New York a slave state.  The New York court’s was appealed to the U..S. Supreme Court in 1860, and it was widely feared that court would adopt the rationale New York had rejected and, thus, effectively make all states slave states.  But the Civil War soon intervened:  the Lemmon appeal was never decided, and emancipation of all slaves at the end of the war made it moot.