ights, their
treatment by the white people, politics, principles and necessity of
education. The Fugitive Slave Law was not reenacted.

Many slaves, however, asserted their rights. Such was the case of
Archy, a slave brought by one Charles A. Stoval from Mississippi to
California in 1857. After hiring Archy out for some time Stoval
undertook to return him to Mississippi. Archy escaped and was arrested
as a fugitive. Stoval sued out a writ of habeas corpus for his
possession and the case came before the Supreme Court for
adjudication. Peter Burnett, formerly Governor, who had been appointed
justice of that court by Governor Johnson in 1857 and filled the
office until 1858, presided. As Burnett was a southern man, his
decision was foreshadowed. He decided that although Stoval could not
sustain the character of either a transient traveler or a visitor and
under the general law was not entitled to Archy, but he yet held that
there were circumstances connected with the particular case that might
exempt him from the operation of the rules laid down. One of the
circumstances was that Stoval was traveling for his health; another,
that he was short of means upon arrival in California; and still
another, that this was the first case of the kind. He, therefore,
ordered Archy to be turned over to Stoval. Joseph G. Baldwin, who
succeeded Burnett, characterized the decision as "giving the law to
the North and the Negro to the South."[39] After being delivered to
Stoval, Archy was taken to San Francisco, but his friends there sued
out a writ of habeas corpus for his liberation before Judge Thomas W.
Freelon, of the County of San Francisco. While this case was pending,
however, Stoval swore to a new affidavit that Archy escaped from him
in Mississippi and procured a warrant from George Pen Johnston, United
States Commissioner, for his arrest as a fugitive slave from
Mississippi. Archy was then discharged by Judge Freelon. He was
immediately rearrested and taken before George Pen Johnston, who
decided that Archy was in no sense a fugitive from Mississippi and
discharged him.[40]

The tendency to free the Negroes brought there checked the importation
of that class. The rights of the master to his slave, however, were
not easily relinquished and the institution of slavery in California
did not come to an end until 1872. Freedom, however, had to win and
the pro-slavery element had to change its policy. In 1856 and 1857
efforts were made