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).