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Article: Prigg v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
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PRIGG V. COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA
PRIGG V. COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA,
41 U.S. 539 (1842). In 1837, a black woman named Margaret Morgan and her children, who were then living in Pennsylvania, were seized as fugitive slaves by Edward Prigg and three other men. The captors took the blacks back to Maryland without first obtaining a certificate of removal from a state judge, as required by an 1826 Pennsylvania personal liberty law. Prigg was subsequently convicted of kidnapping, but, in 1842, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction.
Writing for the Court, Justice Joseph Story concluded that 1) the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was constitutional; 2) all state personal ...