Ch. 4.2. Primary Source: Prigg v. Pennsylvania, SCOTUS, 1842
This decision struck down a Pennsylvania law of 1826 that was held to interfere with the federal Fugitive Slave Act (1793), and reversed the conviction by a Pennsylvania court of Edward Prigg, who had captured Margaret Morgan, who was claimed as a runaway slave, and returned her to a slaveowner in Maryland. Although this decision upheld the Fugitive Slave Act and its constitutional basis (C4.2.3), it was worded in such as a way that it made the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act voluntary for states, and thus the sole responsibility of the federal government.
41 U.S. 539. SCOTUS, March 1, 1842. Mr. Justice Joseph Story delivered the opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court.
This is a writ of error to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania…, for the purpose of revising the judgment of that court, in a case involving the construction of the Constitution and laws of the United States. The facts are briefly these:
The plaintiff in error was indicted in the Court of Oyer and Terminer for York County, for having, with force and violence, taken and carried away from that county, to the State of Maryland, a certain negro woman, named Margaret Morgan, with a design and intention of selling and disposing of, and keeping her, as a slave or servant for life, contrary to a statute of Pennsylvania, passed on the 26th of March, 1826. That statute, in the first section, in substance provides that:
If any person or persons shall… by force and violence, take and carry away, or cause to be taken and carried away… any negro or mulatto from any part of that Commonwealth, with a design and intention of selling and disposing of… or of keeping and detaining…, 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, be deemed guilty of felony, and shall forfeit and pay a sum not less than five hundred, nor more than one thousand dollars, and moreover shall be sentenced to undergo servitude for any term or terms of years, not less than seven years nor exceeding twenty-one years, and shall be confined and kept to hard labor.
The plaintiff in error pleaded not guilty to the indictment, and, at the trial, the jury found a special verdict which in substance states that the negro woman, Margaret Morgan, was a slave for life, and held to labor and service under and according to the laws of Maryland, to a certain Margaret Ashmore, a citizen of Maryland; that the slave escaped and fled from Maryland into Pennsylvania in 1832; that the plaintiff in error, being legally constituted the agent and attorney of the said Margaret Ashmore, in 1837 caused the said negro woman to be taken and apprehended as a fugitive from labor by a state constable under a warrant from a Pennsylvania magistrate;
that the said negro woman was thereupon brought before the said magistrate, who refused to take further cognizance of the case; and thereupon the plaintiff in error did remove, take and carry away the said negro woman and her children out of Pennsylvania into Maryland, and did deliver the said negro woman and her children into the custody and possession of the said Margaret Ashmore. The special verdict further finds that one of the children was born in Pennsylvania more than a year after the said negro woman had fled and escaped from Maryland.
Upon this special verdict, the Court of Oyer and Terminer of York County adjudged that the plaintiff in error was guilty of the offense charged in the indictment. A writ of error was brought from that judgment to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, where the judgment was… affirmed. From this latter judgment, the present writ of error has been brought to this Court…
The counsel for the plaintiff in error have contended that the statute of Pennsylvania is unconstitutional, first, because Congress has the exclusive power of legislation upon the subject matter under the Constitution of the United States and under the act of the 12th of February 1793, which was passed in pursuance thereof; secondly, that, if this power is not exclusive in Congress, still the concurrent power of the state legislatures is suspended by the actual exercise of the power of Congress; and thirdly, that, if not suspended, still the statute of Pennsylvania, in all its provisions applicable to this case, is in direct collision with the act of Congress, and therefore, is unconstitutional and void. The counsel for Pennsylvania maintain the negative of all those points…
There are two clauses in the Constitution upon the subject of fugitives, which stand in juxtaposition with each other and have been thought mutually to illustrate each other. They are both contained in the second section of the fourth Article, and are in the following words:
A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or other crime who shall flee from justice and be found in another State shall, on demand of the executive authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the crime. 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 [C4.2.2-3].
… Historically, it is well known that the object of this [last] clause was to secure to the citizens of the slave-holding States the complete right and title of ownership in their slaves, as property, in every State in the Union into which they might escape from the State where they were held in servitude. The full recognition of this right and title was indispensable to the security of this species of property in all the slave-holding States, and indeed was so vital to the preservation of their domestic interests and institutions that it cannot be doubted that it constituted a fundamental article without the adoption of which the Union could not have been formed. Its true design was to guard against the doctrines and principles prevalent in the non-slaveholding States, by preventing them from intermeddling with, or obstructing, or abolishing the rights of the owners of slaves.
By the general law of nations, no nation is bound to recognize the state of slavery as to foreign slaves found within its territorial dominions, when it is in opposition to its own policy and institutions, in favor of the subjects of other nations where slavery is recognized. If it does it, it is as a matter of comity [i.e., voluntary cooperation], and not as a matter of international right. The state of slavery is deemed to be a mere municipal regulation, founded upon and limited to the range of the territorial laws…
If, indeed, the Constitution guaranties the right, and if it requires the delivery upon the claim of the owner (as cannot well be doubted), the natural inference certainly is that the National Government is clothed with the appropriate authority and functions to enforce it… The clause is found in the National Constitution, and not in that of any State. It does not point out any state functionaries, or any state action, to carry its provisions into effect. The States cannot, therefore, be compelled to enforce them, and it might well be deemed an unconstitutional exercise of the power of interpretation to insist that the States are bound to provide means to carry into effect the duties of the National Government, nowhere delegated or entrusted to them by the Constitution.
On the contrary, the natural, if not the necessary, conclusion is, that the National Government, in the absence of all positive provisions to the contrary, is bound, through its own proper departments, legislative, judicial or executive, as the case may require, to carry into effect all the rights and duties imposed upon it by the Constitution…
We hold the act [of 1793] to be clearly constitutional in all its leading provisions and, indeed, with the exception of that part which confers authority upon state magistrates, to be free from reasonable doubt and difficulty upon the grounds already stated. As to the authority so conferred upon state magistrates, while a difference of opinion has existed, and may exist still, on the point in different States, whether state magistrates are bound to act under it, none is entertained by this Court that state magistrates may, if they choose, exercise that authority unless prohibited by state legislation.
The remaining question is whether the power of legislation upon this subject is exclusive in the National Government or concurrent in the States until it is exercised by Congress. In our opinion, it is exclusive… Before the adoption of the Constitution, no State had any power whatsoever over the subject except within its own territorial limits, and could not bind the sovereignty or the legislation of other States. Whenever the right was acknowledged, or the duty enforced, in any State, it was as a matter of comity, and not as a matter of strict moral, political, or international obligation or duty… We hold the power of legislation on this subject to be exclusive in Congress…
We are by no means to be understood in any manner whatsoever to doubt or to interfere with the police power belonging to the States in virtue of their general sovereignty… But such regulations can never be permitted to interfere with or to obstruct the just rights of the owner to reclaim his slave, derived from the Constitution of the United States, or with the remedies prescribed by Congress to aid and enforce the same.
Upon these grounds, we are of opinion that the act of Pennsylvania upon which this indictment is founded is unconstitutional and void. It purports to punish as a public offense against that State the very act of seizing and removing a slave by his master which the Constitution of the United States was designed to justify and uphold. The special verdict finds this fact, and the state courts have rendered judgment against the plaintiff in error upon that verdict. That judgment must, therefore, be reversed, and the cause remanded to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania with directions to carry into effect the judgment of this Court rendered upon the special verdict, in favor of the plaintiff in error.