Ohio History Journal

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274 OHIO HISTORY

274                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

THE CASE OF SARA LUCY BAGBY: A LATE GESTURE

1. Cleveland Leader, January 21, 1861; Cleveland Herald, January 19, 1861.

2. Annals of Cleveland, 1818-1935 (Cleveland, 1937), XLIV, 3386 (Cleveland Leader,

January 21, 1861).

3. See James H. Fairchild, Oberlin: The Colony and the College, 1833-1883 (Oberlin,

Ohio, 1883), 119-131. See also Ex parte Bushnell and Ex parte Langston (1859), in Helen

Tunnicliff Catterall, ed., Judicial Cases Concerning American Slavery and the Negro

(Washington, D.C., 1937), V, 23-24.

4. Ashtabula Sentinel, July 14, 1859. Editor of the Sentinel was William Cooper

Howells, father of the novelist, William Dean Howells.

5. The two men wanted by Virginia were Owen Brown and Francis Merriam. Ohio's

Attorney General ruled that Virginia did not make out a sufficient case. See Eugene

Roseboom, The Civil War Era, 1850-1873 (Carl Wittke, ed., The History of the State of

Ohio, IV, Columbus, 1944), 359.

The man wanted by Kentucky was William Lago, whose extradition was refused on

the Attorney General's opinion that his offense was not recognized as a crime by the

laws of Ohio. See Annals of Cleveland, XLIII, 2941 (Cleveland Leader, June 20, 1860).

6. Sentinel, June 13, 27, 1860.

7. United States Constitution. Article IV, Section 2.

8. James G. Randall, The Civil War and Reconstruction (New York, 1937), 124,

166-169; Henry H. Simms, A Decade of Sectional Controversy, 1851-1861 (Chapel Hill,

1942), 51, 52-54, 118-123; Emerson D. Fite, Presidential Campaign of 1860 (New York,

1911), 66.

9. Herald, January 19, 1861.

10. Leader, January 21, 1861; Herald, January 19, 1861.

11. Cleveland Plain Dealer, January 21, 1861; Herald, January 19, 1861.

12. Leader, January 21, 1861; Plain Dealer, January 21, 1861.

13. Leader, January 21, 1861.

14. Ibid.

15. Plain Dealer, January 19, 1861.

16. Ibid., January 21, 1861.

17. Herald, January 21, 1861.

18. Leader, January 22, 1861, Herald, January 21, 1861. In his decision, Tilden

reviewed some of the principal laws which had governed the execution of the Fugitive

Slave law in Ohio. Supplementing the "Black Laws" of 1804, which imposed fines for

giving aid to fugitives and hindering the execution of the Fugitive Slave law, an act of

December 20, 1806, had required sheriffs and jailers to receive all prisoners committed

to their custody by the federal government. This edict remained in force for fifty years.

Then, on April 16, 1857, a Republican legislature passed "An act to prohibit the confine-

ment of fugitive slaves in the jails of Ohio," which was the nearest thing Ohio had to a

personal liberty law. It was repealed by the ensuing Democratic legislature, however, on

April 4, 1859, and the law of 1806 was thereby restored. The following Republican

legislature in turn repealed both the amendatory law of 1859 and the original law of

1806, with the act of March 26, 1860, requiring sheriffs and jailers to receive from United

States authorities only those prisoners charged with committing a crime.

Judge Tilden's statement that the Republicans passed a law March 26, 1860, which

modified previous enactments in such a way as to prevent the confinement of fugitive

slaves in local jails, is borne out by reference to Ohio statutes. See Laws of Ohio, LVII,

108-109. This evidence corrects the point made by Porter that attempts by the Republican

legislature in 1860 to prohibt confinement of fugitive slaves in jails resulted in bills getting

no further in either house than to select committees. See George H. Porter, Ohio Politics

During the Civil War Period (New York, 1911), 32-33. At least the law of 1860 repealed

the specific measure passed by the Democrats in the 1858-59 session providing for

confinement of fugitive slaves in jails, and provided further that only those under

United States authority charged with a crime could be confined.

In December 1860, South Carolina's Declaration of the Causes of Secession cited

fourteen northern states for having failed to fulfill their constitutional obligations regard-

ing the Fugitive Slave law: Ohio was not included among them. See Henry S. Commager,

Documents of American History (New York, 1963), 372-374.

19. Plain Dealer, January 21, 1861.

20. John Malvin, Autobiography of John Malvin (Cleveland, 1879), 37-38.

21. Annals of Cleveland, XLIV, 3388-89 (Leader, January 22, 1861).

22. Plain Dealer, January 21, 1861.

23. Malvin, Autobiography, 38.

24. Herald, January 21, 1861.

25. Leader, January 22, 1861.

26. Annals of Cleveland, XLIV, 3390 (Leader, January 23, 1861).