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IN 1853, A RUNAWAY SLAVE FROM MARYLAND NAMED GEORGE SMITH was caught in Pennsylvania.1 Under the terms of the new Fugitive Slave Act that Congress had passed three years earlier, Smith was not entitled to a jury trial. Instead, the act authorized federal magistrates, "upon satisfactory proof being made," to grant certificates that empowered slaveholders to "pursue and reclaim" any "person held to service or labor in any State or Territory of the United States" who "shall hereafter escape into another State or Territory of the United States." Fugitive slaves could not testify in their own defense or dispute their detention in court-the basic right of habeas corpus. The commissioners' decisions could not be appealed.2
In accordance with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, George Smith's captors hauled him before a federal magistrate in Philadelphia. But before the magistrate could sign the certificate for Smith's removal, a writ of habeas corpus arrived from the Philadelphia County Court of Quarter Sessions. George Smith had been earlier indicted for assault and battery. The writ ordered the U.S. marshal to deliver the fugitive slave to the county sheriff, who would bring him to the state courthouse. The federal magistrate had to decide whether to return Smith to his captors or to the Court of Quarter Sessions. More broadly, the order raised the question: did Pennsylvania criminal law take precedence over the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850? The magistrate had good reason to uphold the Fugitive Slave Act and return Smith to his Maryland captors. Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, in what is commonly known as the supremacy clause, stated that federal laws should take precedence over state laws. In addition, the United States Supreme Court had denied in 1842 the constitutionality of "any state law or regulation which interrupts, limits, delays, or postpones the rights of the owner to the immediate command of his service or labor." The federal magistrate returned George Smith to his owner, in accordance with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.3
George Smith's fate-and that of other runaways north of the Mason-Dixon Line-is well known to scholars of slavery and the antebellum United States.4 But scholars have largely ignored how the law worked in the South-a significant oversight given that the vast majority...