in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

PREFACE.

THE general and deep interest of all the citizens of the United States in the case now published, has induced the Reporter to present it to the public in its present form, before the regular reports of the cases decided at the late term of the Supreme Court of the United States can be completed.

The principles of constitutional law, which have been applied in this case to the legislation of the several states relative to fugitive slaves, have established the invalidity of all state laws on this subject. Hereafter, under the Constitution of the United States, Congress will have, exclusively, the protection and maintenance of the rights of the master over his absconded slave, and can alone supply the means of executing the Constitution of the United States for the arrest. of such fugitives, and for their being carried back to the state from which they may have escaped. No state judicial officer, under the authority of state laws, can act in the matter; no such officer is bound to act; and Congress have no right to call upon such officers to carry into effect the laws enacted by the government of the United States.

In delivering the opinion of the Court, Mr. Justice Story says: "Few questions which have ever come before this Court involve more delicate and important considerations; and few upon which the public at large may be presumed to feel a more profound and pervading interest."

Among the principles settled in this case, is one which has a general national importance; and which it is understood is now in discussion between the government of the United States and that of Great Britain.

April, 1842.

3

EDWARD PRIGG, PLAINTIFF IN ERROR, V. THE COMMONWEALTH

OF PENNSYLVANIA, DEFENDANT IN ERROR.

A writ of error to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, brought under the twentyfifth section of the judiciary act of 1789, to revise the judgment of that Court, on a case involving the construction of the Constitution and laws of the United States. Edward Prigg, a citizen of the state of Maryland, was indicted, for kidnapping, in the Court of Oyer and Terminer of York county, Pennsylvania, for having forcibly taken and carried away, from that county, to the state of Maryland, a negro woman, named Margaret Morgan, with the design and intention of her being held, sold, and disposed of as a slave for life, contrary to a statute of Pennsylvania, passed on the twenty-sixth day of March, 1826. Edward Prigg pleaded not guilty, and the jury found a special verdict, on which judgment was rendered for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The case was removed to the Supreme Court of the state, and the judgment of the Court of Oyer and Terminer was, pro forma, affirmed: and the case was carried to the Supreme Court of the United States; the constitutionality of the law, under which the indictment was found, being denied by the counsel of the state of Maryland; which state had undertaken the defence for Edward Prigg, and prosecuted the writ of error. The cause was brought to the Supreme Court, with the sanction of both the states of Maryland and Pennsylvania, with a view to have the questions in the case settled. Margaret Morgan was the slave for life, under the laws of Maryland, of Margaret Ashmore, a citizen of that state. In 1832 she escaped and fled from the state, into Pennsylvania. Edward Prigg, having been duly appointed the agent and attorney of Margaret Ashmore, and having obtained a warrant from a justice of the peace of York county, caused Margaret Morgan to be taken, as a fugitive from labour, by a constable of the state of Pennsylvania, before the magistrate, who refused to take cognisance of the case: and thereupon Edward Prigg carried her and her children into Maryland, and delivered them to Margaret Ashmore. The children were born in Pennsylvania; one of them, more than a year after Margaret Morgan had fled and escaped from Maryland.

By the first section of the act of Assembly of Pennsylvania of 25th March, 1826, it is provided, that if any person shall by force and violence take and carry away, or shall by fraud or false pretence attempt to take, carry away, or seduce any negro or mulatto from any part of the commonwealth, with a design or intention of selling and disposing of, or keeping or detaining such negro or mulatto as a slave or servant for life, or for any other term whatsoever, such person, and all persons aiding and abetting him, shall, on conviction thereof, be deemed guilty of a felony, and shall forfeit and pay a sum not less than five hundred nor more than three thousand dollars, and shall be sentenced to undergo a servitude for any term or terms of years, not less than seven years, nor exceeding twenty-one years; and shall be confined and kept at hard labour, &c. Other provisions are contained in the act; and it was passed in 1826, as declared in its title, to aid in carrying into effect the Constitution and laws of the United States, relating to fugitives from labour; and on the application to the legislature, by commissioners from the state of Maryland,

[Prigg v. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.]

with a view to meet the supposed wishes of the state of Maryland on the subject of fugitive slaves; but it had failed to produce the good effects intended.

By the Court:

It will, probably, be found, when we look to the character of the Constitution of the United States itself, the objects which it seeks to attain, the powers which it confers, the duties which it enjoins, and the rights which it secures; as well as to the known historical fact that many of its provisions were matters of compromise of opposing interests and opinions; that no uniform rule of interpretation can be applied, which may not allow, even if it does not positively demand, many modifications in its actual application to particular clauses. Perhaps the safest rule of interpretation, after all, will be found to be to look to the nature and objects of the particular powers, duties, and rights, with all the light and aids of contemporary history; and to give to the words of each just such operation and force, consistent with their legitimate meaning, as may fairly secure and attain the ends proposed.

It is historically well known, that the object of the clause in the Constitution of the United States, relating to persons owing service and labour in one state escaping into other states, was to secure to the citizens of the slaveholding 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 slaveholding 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 prevailing 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 recognise the state of slavery as to foreign slaves within its territorial dominions, when it is opposed to its own policy and institutions, in favour of the subjects of other nations where slavery is recognised. If it does it, it is as a matter of comity, 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.

The clause in the Constitution of the United States, relating to fugitives from labour, manifestly contemplates the existence of a positive, unqualified right, on the part of the owner of the slave, which no state law or regulation can in any way qualify, regulate, control, or restrain. Any state law or regulation, which interrupts, limits, delays, or postpones the rights of the owner to the immediate command of his service or labour, operates, pro tanto, a discharge of the slave therefrom. The question can never be, how much he is discharged from, but whether he is discharged from any, by the natural or necessary operation of the state laws, or state regulations. The question is not one of quantity or degree, but of withholding or controlling the incidents of a positive right.

The owner of a fugitive slave has the same right to seize and take him in a state to which he has escaped or fled, that he had in the state from which he escaped: and it is well known that this right to seizure or recapture is universally acknowledged in all the slaveholding states. The Court have not the slightest hesitation in holding, that under and in virtue of the Constitution, the owner of the slave is clothed with