"If the fact of unconstitutional actions at both the State and federal level is NOT 'injury or oppression', what IS?"
See my post #240 for additional discussion...
The Supreme Court's decisive 1842 action in striking down Pennsylvania's 1788 and 1826 (note the years!) Fugitive Slave Laws (which protected runaway slaves) left some ambiguity.
This lead some Northern states to rewrite laws to forbid their state officials from enforcing those Federal Fugitive Slave laws which required runaways be returned to their owners.
This "problem" was corrected by the Compromise of 1850 after which by law, northern states were required to enforce Federal Fugitive Slave Laws, and return runaways to their owners.
Point is, in both Prigg v Pennsylvania and the Compromise of 1850, the Southern Slave Power demonstrated its control over Washington Federal Government, and through it over those Northern states who wished to protect runaways from Federal Fugitive Slave Laws.
So the Constitution was still being enforced, despite wishes of Northern anti-slavery Republicans.
There is no evidence I'm aware of if any South Carolina fugitive slave was ever protected and refused to be returned on demand by any Northern state.
BS! That was a finding by the Appeals Court FOR the Supreme Court. Appeals Courts set LEGAL PRECEDENTS:
precedent
1) n. a prior reported opinion of an appeals court which establishes the legal rule (authority) in the future on the same legal question decided in the prior judgment.
http://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=1573
This what's known as settled law. The question cannot be re-asked, if you allow it, there can never BE any 'settled law'.
At that point, the only LEGAL way to change it would be for the northern states to get the Constitution changed, but they knew they couldn't do that.
But that's exactly what the northern states did. They asked, and asked, and asked... until they found a Supreme Court [not an Appeals Court] to agree with them.
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I'd like to take a moment during this emotionally charged moment to make it quite clear I'm no cheerleader for slavery. I'm here on a quest, because over a decade ago, some blatantly Unconstitutional garbage was [yet again] spewed out by Congress.
I decided...THAT DAY., I was going to find out where my rights went.
After mucking about the Codes until my brain felt fried, logic dictated [SHOUTED really] to just go back to the beginning.
So I did.
What I found, for me, clarifies a great many of the Founders words concerning natural rights, the laws of Nature, natural law...etc.
We all know we came from England, so England's laws affect ours. What we were never told is that at about the same time, a Frenchman was coming up with basically the same ideas as Blackstone, but on a more natural, individual basis and how that individual relates within a nation, and how nations relate within each other.
The Founder's held both these works in high regard.
Ordered, That the Secretary purchase Blackstone's Commentaries, and Vattel's Law of Nature and Nations, for the use of the Senate.
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America / Monday / March 10, 1794 / Volume 2 / page 44
IMHO, in order to lessen English influence, they used Vattel more for the federal government. Blackstone, for all practical purposes was already in the states as it came with the colonists.
This still hold true. [Don't believe me? Go back to the law.com dictionary and look up the term Natural Law]
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To believe these facts or not is purely your choice, but until you see where it all went wrong, without that 'slave power' thing rolling around in your head, you never WILL see it.
And, with all Due Respect, I have no desire to continue to engage in a virtual 'pissin' contest' because you can't.
I do appreciate your responses, but political persuasions DO NOT dictate Constitutional Law. That's what the damn thing was written to prevent.
I bid you adieu, Good Sir.
MamaTexan
The Supreme Court's decisive 1842 action in striking down Pennsylvania's 1788 and 1826 (note the years!) Fugitive Slave Laws (which protected runaway slaves) left some ambiguity.
From Prigg v Pennsylvania [my emphasis and explanatory insertion below]:
The clause [the Article IV, Section 2 clause in the Constitution regarding the return of fugitives from service or labor] manifestly contemplates the existence of a positive, unqualified right on the part of the owner of the slave, which no state law or regulation can in any way qualify, regulate, control or restrain. The slave is not to be discharged from service or labor, in consequence of any state law or regulation. Now certainly, without indulging in any nicety of criticism upon words, it may be fairly said, that any state law or state regulation which interrupts, limits, delays, or postpones the right of the owner of the slave to the immediate possession of the slave, and the immediate command of his service and labor, operates, pro tanto, a discharge of the slave therefrom.
That doesn't seem all that ambiguous. The Prigg case stemmed from the 1837 arrest of fugitive slave Margarette Morgan by Edward Prigg, an agent for the slave owner. Prigg had been tried and convicted under Pennsylvania's 1826 law that had, as part of its provisions, punished people who returned fugitive slaves who had escaped to Pennsylvania. The Supreme Court in the Prigg case ruled the 1826 Pennsylvania law unconstitutional.
This "problem" was corrected by the Compromise of 1850 after which by law, northern states were required to enforce Federal Fugitive Slave Laws, and return runaways to their owners.
As I remember, Northern states were not compelled to return slaves by the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. The Federal government was tasked with the return of the fugitive slave. Under that law, Federal commissioners determined whether the person in question was a fugitive slave. The Federal commissioner was typically presented with a court affidavit from the home state of the slave that gave a description of the slave, pointed out that the slave had escaped, and said that the slave owed service to the claimant. If the commissioner ruled that the person was the one being sought, then the northern state had no jurisdiction in the case, and its personal liberty laws did not apply. At that point, the status of the person being charged as a fugitive slave instantly changed to that of a slave under the laws of the home state of the claimant.
Point is, in both Prigg v Pennsylvania and the Compromise of 1850, the Southern Slave Power demonstrated its control over Washington Federal Government, and through it over those Northern states who wished to protect runaways from Federal Fugitive Slave Laws.
I understand the wish of some states to free slaves and not have slavery in their states. I am glad, of course, that slavery no longer exists in this country, and I wish that it had never started here. But states that objected to the return of fugitive slaves were bound by the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution to which the original Northern states had agreed. As you have probably noted in the past, the Constitution was supreme law of the land, and any state laws that violated it were unconstitutional and void.
I'm sorry, BJK, but I will be off the board for a week or so.
I don't know whether any state refused to return a fugitive slave from South Carolina to his/her owners. That might take some searching to find. But I did find where a fugitive slave from South Carolina who escaped to Massachusetts decided to flee to Canada after the passage of the 1850 fugitive slave law. He was aided in that escape by Harriet Beecher Stowe who sheltered him and gave him refuge, food, clothes, and money in his escape to Canada. So, Harriet Beecher Stowe could have been fined and jailed by the 1850 law had her actions been discovered.
This incident was mentioned on page 36 of the book The Experience of a Slave in South Carolina by the escaped slave John Andrew Johnson.
Of course, the later Massachusetts personal liberty law made it more expensive to recover a fugitive slave than the slave was worth. So if any South Carolina slave escaped to Massachusetts after that law was passed, he or she was essentially free through the actions of the state of Massachusetts. The last fugitive slave returned to his/her owner from Massachusetts was in 1854.
Oops, the escaped slave in my post 311 who wrote the book about his experiences and his being aided by Harriet Beecher Stowe was John Andrew Jackson, not John Andrew Johnson.