PRIGG VS. PENNSYLVANIA. An impor tant case decided in 1842 by the Supreme Court of the United States, which defined the rights and duties of the various States with reference to the rendition of fugitive slaves. In 1826 Pennsyl vania passed a law against kidnapping which hn posed severe penalties upon any one who should remove any negro from the State with the inten tion of reducing or returning such slave to a con dition of slavery. In 1837 a slave woman, Mar garette Morgan, who five years before had es caped from her owner in Maryland into Pennsyl vania, was seized by one Edward Prigg, the at torney of her owner, and, together with her children, was delivered to her mistress. Prigg was thereupon tried and convicted of kidnapping in the court of York County, Pa., and the de cision of this court was confirmed by the Su preme Court of Pennsylvania, to which Prigg ap pealed. The case was then carried before the Supreme Court of the United States which, by a vote of five to four, reversed the earlier decisions, and, among other things, decided (1) that by the Constitution the National Congress had the ex clusive right to legislate concerning the rendition of fugitive slaves; (2) that the Legislatures of the various States had no power to pass legisla tion this subject; (3) that Pennsylvania's law of 1826 was therefore void ; (4) that "the owner of a slave is clothed with entire authority in every State in the Union to seize and recap ture his slave, whenever he can do it without any breach of the peace, or uny illegal violence;" and (5) that no State could be compelled to aid the enforcement of a United States law on this subject. Though the right of slave-owners to
their fugitive slaves was unequivocably confirmed, this decision has been regarded by many as in one respect a "triumph of freedom." since it relieved the various free States of any necessary partici pation in the catching and returning of fugitive slaves and encouraged them to pass laws, known as "Personal Liberty Laws," prohibiting all State officials, under heavy penalties. from aiding slave catchers in any way and forbidding the use of State jails for the detention of captured fugitives. Consult Thayer, Cases on Constitutional Lair, vol. i. (Boston, 1894) ; and 16 Peters 539.