Fugitive justice : runaways, rescuers, and slavery on trial / Steven Lubet.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lubet, Steven.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Loring, Edward G. (Edward Greely), 1802-1890.

Loring, Edward G.

United States. Fugitive slave law (1850).

United States.

Trials (Political crimes and offenses)--United States.

Trials (Political crimes and offenses).

Fugitive slaves--Legal status, laws, etc--United States.

Fugitive slaves.

Slavery--Law and legislation--United States.

Slavery.

Antislavery movements--United States.

Antislavery movements.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (378 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In this book, Steven Lubet examines, in detail, three trials on the great issue of fugitive slaves in the 1850’s, the fugitive slave statutes, and how the legal system coped or failed to cope with the apparent inconsistencies between the Constitution supporting slavery and its purpose of guaranteeing certain rights to every man. The first case occurred in 1851 when a white Pennsylvania miller named Caster Hanway faced treason charges based on his participation in the Christiana slave riot. The second trial was of Anthony Burns in Boston, and the third case arose out of the 1858 capture of John Price by Kentucky slavehunters in the abolitionist stronghold of Oberlin, Ohio. The fugitive slave trials also provide modern readers with uncomfortable insights into the nature of slavery itself. With sincere conviction, many northern judges – including some who claimed to oppose slavery – calmly considered the quantum of evidence necessary to turn a human being into property. This book powerfully illuminates the tremendous bravery of the fugitives, the moral courage of their rescuers and lawyers, and, alas, the failure of American legal and political institutions to come to grips with slavery short of civil war.

Contents:

Slavery and the Constitution

The Missouri equilibrium

The compromise of 1850

But we have no country

A traitorous combination

Prosecution at Independence Hall

Sir-did you hear it?

Athens of America

Kidnapping again!

The height of cruelty

Judge Loring's predicament

Freedom on the Western reserve

The son betrays and the father indicts

Votaries of the higher law

An irrepressible conflict.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780674059467

0674059468

OCLC:

709594410