Essay On Prigg Vs Pennsylvania

The Prigg vs. Pennsylvania case of 1842 is one of the most important Supreme Court cases over slavery. The case involved a black woman named Margaret Morgan, a former black slave that was freed by her master, John Ashmore, but was never formally emancipated. As Margaret settled down with her husband, a free-born black man named Jerry Morgan in Pennsylvania, John Ashmore's widow, Margaret Ashmore hired Nathan Bemis and Edward Prigg to collect the alleged fugitive (Armenti, para.3). The men followed the 1826 law of which they must apply to a judge to issue a warrant for fugitives. After the granted permission by Thomas Henderson, the group found and captured the entire Morgan family, including Jerry Morgan. It was only until returning to Henderson's

Jerry Morgan was freed, but Margaret Morgan remained in a jail in Bel-Air as he fled from the turn of events, only to perish at sea while on a boat to Colombia (Armenti, para.5). Regarding Prigg and the fellow men that assisted in the capture, he argued that the 1826 law and the Pennsylvania law of 1788 not only violates the constitutional guarantee for extradition, but also violates the federal government's fugitive slave law of 1793. The men were indicted for violating the personal liberty law of 1826, which states that no person could be brought into Pennsylvania and be held as a slave, which is what Prigg and his associates did when they captured the Morgan family and held them against their will as slaves (Oyez, para.1). They were not punished too much, but this still left an issue with if Pennsylvania's laws were being held constitutional as a place for freed slaves. The ruling of Joseph Story made way in which it was found unconstitutional as it violated the fugitive slave law and Article 4, Section 2 of the United States Constitution (Oyez, para.3) The ruling resulted in the leverage that federal law presides over state