Elektratig

Before the Supreme Court of Missouri, John’s owners, Tiffin and Menard (they are not otherwise identified), asserted that the court should n...

The Supreme Court of Missouri decided Winny v. Whitesides , discussed in earlier posts, in 1824. Three years later, in Merry v. Tiffin , 1 ...

Third, Mrs. Whitesides argued that the Northwest Ordinance simply provided that there would not be slavery in the Northwest Territory. It d...

Mrs. Whitesides’ second argument was that, even if Winny had been free in the Northwest Territory, she had not sued for her freedom or been ...

To recap, Winny was a slave owned by the Whitesides, who took her from Carolina to Illinois, Northwest Territory in about 1795. They resided...

Winny v. Whitesides , 1 Mo. 472, 1824 WL 1839 (1824), decided by the Supreme Court of Missouri in 1824, is a wonderful case to use as a prim...

Justice Nisbet explained that, although the common law did not protect slaves, the lot of slaves was far better in Georgia than it had been ...

There was in slave states a well-developed law of slavery. The history books and legal articles sometimes describe particular holdings in br...

The literature suggests that Salmon P. Chase first became known as an antislavery advocate through his association with future Liberty Party...

As I previously noted, Justice Crawford was also troubled by the fact that the Fugitive Slave Act provided that alleged fugitive slaves coul...

To recap, the dissenting Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice, Associate Justice Samuel Crawford, concluded that the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 w...

After explaining what his views of federal and state authority concerning enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Clause would be "[i]f this ...

When it comes to the Civil War, everyone loves to think and talk about causation. Was slavery the cause of the Civil War? Why did the Confed...

In a recent post at Civil War Bookshelf discussing an article about the Oxford University Press American history series , Dimitri Rotov mis...

The following quote comes from Michael J.C. Taylor's H-Net review of Mark A. Graber's book, Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitut...

Rather than moaning about how the evil "Bushitler" is destroying the world, you would be better off contemplating what real evil i...

Justice Crawford then turned to "the question of greatest moment," upon which "a decision or opinion . . . is most desired in...

Justice Crawford parted company with his colleagues on the jurisdiction question. Although the court had the authority to inquire into the ...

The dissenter on the Wisconsin Supreme Court was Associate Justice Samuel Crawford. Justice Crawford's history is quite different from t...

The United States' principal argument in support of the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was that the United States S...