Prigg V. Pennsylvania

The captivity of slaves as one’s property was orginally enforced by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, although it still did not address those who might assist a slave’s escape. Titled “An Act respecting the fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters”, this law officially permitted the recapture of slaves who escaped to northern free states. Therefore, former slaves were at risk of recapture for all their lives. Moreover, children of escaped slave mothers were made lifelong property of the mother’s master. Numerous northern states authorized enactment to secure free dark Americans - who could somehow or another be kidnapped, then conveyed under the steady gaze of court without the capacity to create a protection, and in this manner legitimately oppressed - and also runaway slaves. These laws came to be known as "personal liberty laws" and required slave proprietors and outlaw seekers to deliver confirm that their catches were genuinely criminal slaves, "similarly as southern states requested the privilege to recover runaway slaves, northern states requested the privilege to shield their free dark occupants from being abducted and sold into subjugation in the South.” A controversial example may be the case of Prigg v. Pennsylvania. Edward Prigg was a citizen of Maryland and had been arraigned by a Pennsylvania court for trying to capture a black woman in York County to send her to Maryland as a fugitive slave. He was attempted and indicted by a local court in Pennsylvania, yet the case was finally appealed to the Supreme Court.

Although Prigg had initially shown his legitimate warrant to the Pennsylvania court, it had been unlawfully disregarded, demonstrating that the Fugitive Slave Act actually relied on upon state judges, not the national