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I agree with Wade that Patricia Reid’s extensive background information is a little excessive and dilutes her argument. She does, however, makes some points in her article, “Margaret Morgan’s Story: A Threshold Between Slavery and Freedom, 1820-1842,” worth dissecting. Her strongest point states the obvious, yet summarizes her entire article. For those blacks who had their freedom undocumented or unrecorded, their freedom was based on white authority (368). Her example of Richard Allen’s struggles with the slave catcher who had a fake cause, serve as prime justification for her argument. I’ve often wondered how blacks in the north determined their freedom from slave catchers. Since technology merely allowed for a paper stating “this man is a free man” (or something like that) for a slave to carry around, a slave catcher could easily ask for documentation proving the slaves freedom, tear up said document, then claim this was the slave he was looking to catch. Immoral? Absolutely. But a quick way to make a few extra bucks. Interestingly though, some whites did stand up for their fellow man against these unethical slave catchers. Without white support, however, blacks had a much more difficult time defending themselves against the claims of a white person (we all remember the difficulties Django had about proving his freedom) As we’ve talked about in class, this is a similar problem Native Americans faced as well.
Reid loses me when she discusses the Constitution being used as a pro-slavery document. This claim is a stretch. I understand the prosecution addressed the constitutionality of the Pennsylvania Personal Liberty Law of 1826, but I don’t think the ruling of this case makes the Constitution a pro-slavery document. The creators of the Constitution either viewed slavery too divisive (let’s keep in mind they were trying to unify a new nation, not tear it apart) or simply didn’t know what to do about slavery, but either way, the framers intentionally left out slavery from the Constitution. They called for an end to the slave trade in 1808, which at least shows that the framers viewed taking people from their native lands, across an ocean, to work for another human wasn’t acceptable anymore. Granted, the Constitution does allow for runaway slaves to be returned to their owners. But this (in the context of the time where slaves were viewed as property, something we condone today) is comparable to a horse running away to a pasteur with better food and more places to frolic and play, and giving anyone the power to return the horse to its owner. Back to the original point, the case involving Margaret Morgan and her family is tragic because they, along with the lower court’s decision, were in the right. As Reid states, the Morgan’s had no lawyer to defend them, so their case became a quarrel between Maryland and Pennsylvania instead of over their actual freedom. But this doesn’t support slavery as an institution, rather it supports the Federal government’s superiority over the states and the Pennsylvania legislators’ inability to craft a worthy law protecting blacks during this period. Henry’s and Ian’s posts support the latter part of my previous sentence.