Free Men All: The Personal Liberty Laws of the North 1780-1861.
Morris, Thomas D. Free Men All: The Personal Liberty Laws of the North 1780-1861. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974. xii, 253 pp. Reprinted 2010 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN-13: 9781616190972. ISBN-10: 1616190973. Paperback. New. $39.95 * The personal liberty laws expressed a commitment to abolition and personal freedom and helped to lay the foundation for the Fourteenth Amendment. Morris examines those statutes as enacted in Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, Ohio and Wisconsin, and argues that these laws were an alternative to the violence allowed by the southern slave codes and the extreme abolitionist viewpoints of the north. The book specifically analyzes the statutes as enacted in five representative states: Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Wisconsin and explores how these state laws evolved in response to federal measures like the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850. It details the key legal battles, including the Supreme Court cases of Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842) and Ableman v. Booth (1859), which addressed the conflict between state and federal authority over fugitive slave issues and traces the shift in northern policy from early anti-kidnapping measures and procedural guarantees (like jury trials for alleged fugitives) to the eventual withdrawal of all state cooperation in enforcing federal fugitive slave laws. The Southern states viewed these personal liberty laws as a violation of the constitutional compact, and their existence was cited as evidence of Northern failure to uphold federal law when the Southern states seceded in 1860 and 1861. "Morris's well-researched book is an excellent example of the work of those American historians who believe that legal-constitutional history is intellectual history.. Morris's work is...a solid contribution to the literature of the law of slavery and abolition and is a welcome addition to William R. Leslie's seminal dissertation (University of Michigan, 1945) on the Fugitive Slave Clause." --MARY F. BERRY, The American Historical Review 80 (1974) 1386-87. THOMAS D. MORRIS [1938-] taught in the Department of History, Portland State University, and is the author of Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619-1860.
Price: $39.95
Book number 57328