t demanded that they leave town within two
hours. In the meantime they were all four arrested, tried and found
guilty of trespass.[335] When these events were reported back to
Kentucky mass meetings were held throughout the State in protest
against the Michigan action. The State legislature drew up a
resolution calling upon Congress to enact a new fugitive slave
law.[336] The Senate referred the petition to the Committee on
Judiciary and they later reported a new fugitive slave bill which was
read twice and then pigeonholed. The same action was repeated at the
next session in 1849.

The general feeling in Kentucky was intensified just at this time by a
decision of the United States Supreme Court in the case of Jones _vs._
Van Zandt, which had been pending in various courts for five years. In
April, 1842, John Van Zandt, a former Kentuckian, then living in
Springdale just north of Cincinnati, was caught in the act of aiding
nine fugitive slaves to escape, and one of them got away even from the
slave catchers. Consequently Wharton Jones, the Kentucky owner,
brought suit against Van Zandt in the U. S. Circuit Court under the
federal fugitive slave act of 1793 for $500 for concealing and
harboring a fugitive slave. The jury returned a verdict for the
plaintiff in the sum of $1,200 as damages on two other counts in
addition to the penalty of $500 for concealing and harboring. Salmon
P. Chase was the lawyer for Van Zandt and in a violent attack on the
law 1793 he appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court on the grounds that
this statute was repugnant to the Constitution of the United States
and to the sixth article of the Ordinance of 1787. Van Zandt in the
appeal had the advantage of the services of William H. Seward in
addition to Chase while Jones was represented by Senator Morehead, of
Kentucky. Justice Levi Woodbury in rendering the decision of the court
sustained all the judgments against Van Zandt and denied that the law
of 1793 was opposed to either the Constitution or the Ordinance of
1787.[337]

At last the people of Kentucky had secured a firm ruling from the
highest judicial authority on the force of the existing laws. Cold
reason in the light of that day, apart from all anti-slavery
propaganda, justified them in making these demands. Henceforth, there
was no doubt about the legality of their position--it was a question
merely of the illegal opposition to the return of fugitives from the
States to the North. The Trou