| Prigg v. Pennsylvania - 41 U.S. 539 (1842)
During the year of 1832, a black woman named Margaret Morgan moved to Pennsylvania from Maryland, where she had once been a slave to a man named John Ashmore. In Maryland, she had lived in virtual freedom but had never been formally emancipated.[5: Amar, Akhil Reed (2005). America's Constitution: A Biography. Random House. p. 262. ISBN 1-4000-6262-4.] Ashmore's heirs eventually decided to claim her as a slave and hired slavecatcher Edward Prigg to recover her.
On April 1, 1837, Edward Prigg led an assault and abduction on Morgan in York County, Pennsylvania. They took Morgan to Maryland, intending to sell her as a slave (her children, one of whom was born a free citizen in Pennsylvania, were also captured and were sold). The four men involved in the abduction were arraigned under the 1826 act. Prigg pleaded not guilty, and argued that he had been duly appointed by John Ashmore to arrest and return Morgan to her owner in Maryland. However, in a ruling on May 22, 1839, the Court of Quarter Sessions of York County convicted him.
Prigg appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds that the Pennsylvania law was not able to supersede federal law or the constitution; the Fugitive Slave Act and Article 4 of the constitution being in question with the Pennsylvania law of 1788. The case was Prigg V. Pennsylvania, 41 U. S. 539 (1842)
source: Wikipedia article accessed 2012/09/16
Best secondary source: SORTING OUT PRIGG v. PENNSYLVANIA
Paul Finkelman, Rutgers Law Journal, 24-3(1993), pp. 605 ff. |
