5, been carried to France
and some of them manumitted there. The judge then said that, "assuming
that by French law they were entitled to freedom, there is nothing in
this act to prevent their mistress bringing them back and holding them
_as before_."

He seems to have considered it immaterial, or to have been ignorant,
that, in accordance with the maxim, "Once free, forever free," declared
in the courts of his own State of Maryland, the courts of Louisiana
held, as did those of Kentucky and other States also, that, "having been
for one moment in France, it was not in the power of her former owner to
reduce her again to slavery," and to have forgotten the doctrines of one
of his own opinions.

Slavery, when he came upon the bench, began to look to the Supreme Court
as its surest defence.

The Prigg case, as it is called, or, as lawyers call it, Prigg _vs._ The
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, was an amicable suit; the parties in
interest being the States of Maryland and Pennsylvania, which were
represented by the ablest counsel, who came into court, as Johnson,
Attorney-General of Pennsylvania, said, "to terminate disputes and
contentions which were arising, and had for years arisen, along the
border line between them, on the subject of the escape and delivering up
of fugitive slaves." The counsel regarded themselves, as he said, as
engaged in "the work of peace," and "of patriotism also."

Edward Prigg and others were indicted in Pennsylvania for kidnapping a
negro woman on the 1st of April, 1837. The cause came to trial before
the York Quarter Sessions, May 22, 1839; and the counsel agreed that a
special verdict should be taken and judgment rendered, and thereupon the
case carried up, so as to present the questions of law arising, under
the Pennsylvania Emancipation Act of 1780, upon the United States act of
1793 touching fugitives from labor, and the statute of Pennsylvania
passed in 1826, which provided for the seizure and surrender of fugitive
slaves and for the punishment of kidnapping. The case was made up and
presented in that spirit of compromise which has been the bane and
delusion of America, (as if there could be any compromise of
justice,)--the counsel for Pennsylvania claiming that their statute was
auxiliary to that of the United States, really beneficial to Slavery,
and that they advocated the true interests of the South as well as of
the Union and the North,--in order to have the Judiciary authoritativ