Many of my fellow classmates have mentioned the case of Prigg vs. Pennsylvania in their posts, particularly CT as he mentioned the case in his post to highlight the fact that “for those blacks who had their freedom undocumented or unrecorded, their freedom was based on white authority” (368) I agree with CT’s assortment that during this time much of black freedom was predicated on white’s perception of their freedoms and rights but in my opinion, the particular case of Prigg vs. Pennsylvania, in fact, helped the cause of slave’s and fugitive’s rights more than it hindered them. Patricia Reid, in “Margaret Morgan’s Story: A Threshold Between Slavery And Freedom, 1820-1842″ mentions that this particular case ” ultimately resulted in, the infamous Dred Scott opinion”, which as we know made the ruling that African Americans were slave property and thus not able to attain citizenship of the United States. (359-360) In doing this, Reid is making a direct claim that the case of Prigg vs. Pennsylvania was counterproductive in the fight for the rights of runaways and freed slaves. But, in my opinion, Reid is putting to much emphasis on the events that occurred directly after the ruling, rather than the developments in the multiple decades since. Justice Joseph Story, while in the ruling did not claim the Fugitive State Law to be unconstitutional, did mention that state legislations had the authority to enact their own laws regarding the issue. In doing this, Justice Story transferred the authority of managing runaway slaves away from the Federal Government and in the hands of the states, which, in my opinion, greatly aided the cause of slaves and fugitives especially in the North.<\/p>\n

But looking at the specific ruling of Prigg vs. Pennsylvania, one can see that it gives states the ability to interpret the Fugitive Slave Act as they please, as it recognized certain states held a different stance towards fugitive’s rights than did the decision made by the court. So while, the immediate effects of the ruling were of course not ideal for Margaret Morgan, it did prove to aid multiple laws and legislations passed thereafter, in supporting runaways if state legislation allowed particularly in Northern states, where fugitive laws were less enforced. In this particular case, thus, it is important to realize that the immediate effects of an incident, while important to analyze in their own right, stand separate from the lasting impacts and future developments of the issues surrounding the particular incident, in this case, the case of Pregg vs. Pennsylvania. Although, I agree with both CT and Reid regarding their assessment of white authority over black freedom, I also one should focus on the lasting effects of an event, so as to see the entire picture and wholly understand the topic of discussion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many of my fellow classmates have mentioned the case of Prigg vs. Pennsylvania in their posts, particularly CT as he mentioned the case in his post to highlight the fact that “for those blacks who had their freedom undocumented or unrecorded, their freedom was based on white authority” (368) I agree with CT’s assortment that … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Prigg vs. Pennsylvania- Focus On Lasting Impact Rather than Immediate Effect”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[160,161,147,162,163,164],"class_list":["post-267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-authority","tag-black","tag-freedom","tag-fugitive-rights","tag-lasting-impacts","tag-white"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his342-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his342-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his342-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his342-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his342-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his342-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his342-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his342-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his342-fall2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}