In 1842, the U.S Supreme Court ordered that states could enact rules directing how runaway slaves’ cases were resolved. Several states including Michigan passed “Personal Liberty Laws” to curtail the kidnappings. However, black occupants were neither allowed to vote nor participate in the jury.
In 1855, the Michigan state legislature passed two laws. Firstly, Act 162 was “an Act to protect the Liberties and Rights of the Inhabitants of the State,” which provided the fugitive slaves the privilege to litigation by jury. It also ordered prosecuting attorneys to protect and defend any person arrested or claimed as a fugitive slave. The Act punished slave catchers who unjustifiably accused free individuals of being run-aways and forced the claimer to have at least two witnesses proving the implicated individuals were, in fact, runaway slaves. Secondly, Act 163 prohibited the use of ordinary jails for keeping accused fugitive slaves. The law banned sheriffs from detaining the runaway slaves and any sheriff found aiding the slave catchers was liable to an indictment for misdemeanor and could be jailed for a year or fined 1000 dollars if found guilty.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
The laws were controversial in the sense that they protected the African Americans from kidnappings and being claimed as fugitive slaves, unlike the Fugitive Slave Acts that authorized illegal capturing of free blacks for servitude. The Fugitive Slave Acts allowed local governments to seize escaped slaves and return them to their owners. Slaveholding states complained that the liberty laws violated the “fugitive slave clause.” South Carolina, being a slaveholding state, certainly did not approve of the rules. The Abolitionists responded that the fundamental principle of state preeminence was that states could define the status of its citizens and protect them in their liberty.
The theme of governance enables one to understand the impact of slavery in Michigan state and how the “Personal Liberty Laws” initiated an uprising against servitude. The republican form of governance in Michigan advocated for the abolition of slavery.
