Ohio History Journal

action cost Chief Justice Swan, who approved the penalties, his renom-

ination at the next Republican state convention. A compromise, however,

finally settled the remaining cases whereby the federal government agreed

to drop its cases against the other rescuers in return for the cancellation of

kidnapping charges by Lorain County against the slave catchers.³ One of

the state's most radical papers, the Ashtabula Sentinel, claimed in 1859,

"It [the government's retreat] has demonstrated that the execution of the

Fugitive Act is at an end on the Western Reserve, and most likely in Ohio

and the free States."⁴

During the time between the Oberlin and Bagby cases, other incidents

kept Ohioans' attention on the legal ramifications of slavery. Early in 1860

Governor Dennison refused two extradition requests from southern gover-

nors: one for two men wanted by Virginia for participating in the John

Brown raid and another for a man wanted in Kentucky for enticing a slave

to leave her owner.⁵ In June 1860 another fugitive incident occurred in

Cincinnati where a Negro named James Waggoner was surreptitiously taken

across the river to Newport, Kentucky, by two kidnappers. Although Wag-

goner was remanded to slavery despite evidence of his free condition, the

abductors were excused because of lack of evidence against them and Cin-

cinnati thus remained relatively calm. "Instead of laying Newport in ashes,

they permitted the pirates of that city to enslave a freeman of Cincinnati.

It was a dastardly submission, disgraceful to our State," Joshua R. Gid-

dings had fulminated from the Western Reserve.⁶

In 1861 the Sara Lucy Bagby case tested the Fugitive Slave law again,

but this time the scene was directly connected with the Western Reserve,

the nationally reputed "hotbed of abolition." This was also a period when

the stability of the nation was uncertain. Chief among the causes of se-

cession listed by South Carolina was the nonenforcement of the Fugitive

Slave law in the North, a point which was at issue in this case. The specific

matter under consideration cannot be understood in its broader implica-

tions without a brief summary of the background controversy over the fugi-

tive slave question. The Constitution required that persons held to service

or labor in one state who escaped to another should not be discharged

from such service but upon demand should be returned to those to whom

their labor was due.⁷ Since there had been some difference of opinion as

to whether the federal government or the states should make this rendi-

tion effective, the Fugitive Slave law of 1850 provided that such obligation

was in the hands of the federal authorities and also established the ma-

chinery for the return of fugitives by them. From time to time during the

fifties as many as eleven northern state legislatures passed what were known

as "personal liberty" acts, which tended to impede, in varying degrees,

the operation of the national legislation of 1850. The federal enactment

was, however, upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1859.

Despite the fact that a strong constitutional argument could be presented

for the return of fugitive slaves and that federal law and court decisions

upheld that policy, there were those who, naturally averse to such action,

appealed to the "higher law" principle, namely that their consciences would

224                                                 OHIO HISTORY

not permit them to condone or assist in implementing legal machinery so

much at variance with moral concepts.⁸

What of Sara Lucy Bagby, the center of the storm? A reporter for the

Cleveland Herald found her in the county jail shortly after her seizure

and described her as "a pretty dark colored woman" of about twenty-eight

years of age. Lying face downward on a bed, she spoke little, though cor-

rectly, and her questioner concluded that she evinced "a decided taste

for freedom."⁹ As the story unfolded in the Cleveland newspapers, it ap-

peared that Miss Lucy, as she became popularly known in her brief moment

of fame, was in truth a very recent addition to the city's population.

According to her own testimony, she once had been the slave of William

S. Goshorn, but this status was changed when Goshorn's daughter, Isabella,

took her on a short trip to Pennsylvania. There she had been told that she

was in a free state and could do as she pleased. Acting on this information,

Lucy ran away. She eventually had made her way to Cleveland where,

answering to the name of Ann, she was employed for a time as a domestic

in the household of A. G. Riddle, Republican Congressman-elect from the

Nineteenth District. During the last few weeks preceding her detection,

she had filled a similar position for L. A. Benton. From the moment of her

capture, however, she made no attempt to deny the claim of ownership

on the part of the younger Goshorn and seemed resigned to her inevitable

remandment.10

Almost immediately after news of Lucy's apprehension, the law partners

R. R. Spalding, A. G. Riddle and C. W. Palmer volunteered to represent

her. A hearing before the United States Commissioner was scheduled for

Monday, January 21, 1861. Though Lucy's positive identification left her

lawyers scant material with which to work, Spalding succeeded in getting

a writ of habeas corpus on the morning of the capture. Probate Judge D. R.

Tilden, who issued the writ, set the hearing for the same afternoon, and

the municipal courthouse immediately became the focal point of public in-

terest. There a large crowd, including a high proportion of colored said

to be armed with knives, had been gathering since morning. Rumors of a

rescue attempt were rife. The Negroes of the community were reported to

have organized a watch to prevent the removal of the fugitive, and the

women were said to be especially belligerent. Police cleared the jail yard

of spectators; while at the courthouse, the doors were opened early to avoid

the pressure of the crowd. As a final precaution, Spalding said that the

presence of Lucy would not be required, and so the hearing proceeded with-

out her.11

Spalding decided not to contest the seizure of the fugitive by federal

authorities, but to protest only against her incarceration in the public jail,

since under an Ohio law of 1860 the use of local jails by United States

agents was limited solely to persons who had been charged with a crime.

After Spalding's presentation, Judge Tilden, already aware of the poten-

tial political implications of the case, stated that he wished to proceed

cautiously because of the excitement aroused. "It has been said in all

SARA LUCY BAGBY                                                  225

quarters of the country that this city is disloyal to law and order," Tilden

warned. He enjoined all citizens, but especially the Negroes, to remain

quiet and await the redress of the law, setting down the theme which would

mold all ensuing discussion and even the conduct of the case itself:

I don't believe there is a section of this country where a feeling

against the Fugitive Slave Law prevails to the extent it does here, where

so much regard is felt for the dignity of the law. Let us in this instance

testify to the country that we are a law-abiding as well as a liberty-

loving community.

He then deferred his decision until 9:00 A.M. on Monday, exactly one hour

before the United States Commissioner was slated to hear the case.12 It

was an astute move on the part of the Judge, who thus kept the city's

agitation in a state of abeyance until the last possible moment before the

trial.

Cleveland's three daily newspapers agreed with Tilden's observation that

the city itself was on trial, though they viewed the event in a vastly dif-

ferent manner. In a somber mood the Leader, probably the most radical

Republican daily in the state, counselled its readers that:

This fugitive case is made, at this time and in this place, as a test

question. The issue to be tried is whether the Fugitive Slave Law can

be enforced upon the Western Reserve, which Southerners declare "the

hot-bed of Abolitionism." A rescue from the officers of the law, would

be trumpeted the length and breadth of the land. Secessionists would

seize upon it, as proof that the North and the Republican party are

wilful nullifiers of the laws. The disunion flame would be fanned with

the assertion that all the law-abiding declarations of Republicans were

false and of no effect; and the hopes of all who yet look to a peace-

ful Union, would be cast down by such an untimely move.

On the other hand, should the people of the City of Cleveland, in the

Western Reserve -- whose bitter hostility to the system of slavery is pro-

verbial, and whose every sympathy is roused in favor of the escaped bond-

man -- if this people, by their acts today, proclaim to the country and

the world that they can set aside their feelings and their sympathies;

that they will submit to the power of the Federal Laws, even though

those laws be totally repugnant and unjust; that they have a calm

judgment which outbalances the impulses of the moment, and brings

the latter in subjection to the former, then the effect of the act for

good at this particular crisis, will be felt through all the country.¹³

Acutely aware of the complete turnabout which this advice represented

from the past attitude of the Reserve to the Fugitive Slave law, the Leader

attempted to assuage the tempers of its fellow Republicans. It voiced its

trust that "What we say ... will not be misunderstood as any concession

of principle or of faith, but as what we consider our duty to say in this

crisis." It asserted its own feeling that the law was "unjust, oppressive,

infamous and unconstitutional," and should be changed. Its belief was that

"The people of Ohio and the Western Reserve ... hate and detest the Fugi-

tive Slave Laws, with all the power of their honest souls." But the Leader

also believed these same people were "law-abiding," and "when it is clearly

set before them that they must submit, for the time being, to that law,

226                                                OHIO HISTORY

we believe they will do it." The city's humiliation would be only temporary,

and the newspaper exhorted its readers to "await the hour, when, with the

legislative power in our hands, we can sweep the infamous law from the

statute books, and have no law that we cannot with a clean conscience

obey."¹⁴

Contrasting the pre-election militancy of the Republicans with their pres-

ent submissiveness, the Democratic Plain Dealer was positively gleeful over

"what a change two short months have produced.^"15 Its headlines on the

same day of the Leader's abnegation heralded:

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE CASE.

CLEVELAND NO LONGER A CONGO CITY.

THE HIGHER LAW COMING DOWN.

NO ABOLITIONISTS TO BE FOUND.

THE RESERVE TO BE REDEEMED.

The accompanying editorial alleged that:

Black Republicans have all fled and there are no Abolitionists to be

found. The negroes themselves have had a Meeting and resolved to

obey the laws, and even the Leader avows itself a conservative paper....

The bleaching process is working wonders and white men are found

largely in the majority. A white man could be elected Mayor to-day,

and if the revolution goes on, a white man may yet go to Congress

from this old Giddings district.

Gazing back upon the comparatively recent outpourings of sympathy by

the city for the Oberlin rescuers and John Brown, the Plain Dealer con-

gratulated the citizenry on the change toward a more conservative posi-

tion. "As things are tending, the country may yet be saved," it stated. "As

goes Cleveland so goes the Reserve, and as goes the Reserve so goes RIDDLE;

GIDDINGS, the WADES, and the great and glorious conservative Republican

party of these UNITED STATES.^"16

A more dispassionate view of the proceedings was taken by the moderate

Republican Cleveland Herald, which calmly compared the present affair with

the Oberlin rescue. It saw the chief difference between the two cases as

marked by the attitudes of the claimants. Instead of sneaking into town

and attempting to whisk away their prey from under the noses of the in-

habitants, the Goshorns had openly complied with all the forms of the law.

As a result, the people of Cleveland had decided on their part to comply

also with the law, "not that they hate slavery less, but because they love

obedience to law more.^"17

But Lucy's case was far from over, and Monday's sessions brought new

threats of an uprising. Crowds again gathered about the courthouse before

the opening hour of nine. United States Marshal Matthew Johnson had

appointed a special force of deputies to maintain order, and even requested

the Cleveland Grays to remain in readiness in their armory. Lucy's counsel,

R. R. Spalding, appealed to the crowd from the courthouse steps to refrain

from any rescue attempts. Lucy was brought before Judge Tilden without

difficulty, however, and Tilden then rendered his decision that the prisoner

SARA LUCY BAGBY                                                   227

could not be held in the jail, though she could be kept in custody in an-

other place.18

Lucy was then due to appear before the United States Commissioner, and

in transferring her from the municipal court to the United States court in

the post office building, her guards had their closest brush with the mob.

The appearance of the prisoner triggered a surge which had to be beaten

back by the policemen with clubs.¹⁹ Negro John Malvin, an eyewitness,

later described two incidents in that surly crowd: one, a stunning blow

on a colored man's head seemingly the result of a misunderstanding, and

the other a very deliberate attempt by an Irishman to cudgel another

Negro with a club.²⁰ The Leader, which viewed the marshal's special deputy

corps as "a gross insult to Cleveland," accused the men of striking at every

Negro they passed on the way to the courthouse.21 In the Plain Dealer,

however, one reads of razors, bowie knives, loaded pistols, stones, and brick-

bats taken from the persons of arrested Negroes, and of one Negro woman

arrested for throwing pepper into the eyes of a deputy marshal.22

Despite the incidents, Lucy reached the courtroom, and the actual fugi-

tive slave hearing began -- although not, according to Malvin, before the

ubiquitous Cleveland Negro, W. E. Ambush, had "some words" with the

younger Goshorn which resulted in both contestants drawing pistols right

in the courtroom.²³ In the ensuing proceedings it was apparent that even

the defense realized that it did not have much of a case. The law precluded

Lucy's testimony in her own behalf, and John Goshorn testified that his

granddaughter Isabella had never made the alleged trip to Pennsylvania

with Lucy. Goshorn indicated that Lucy made her escape from his son's

house in Wheeling on the evening of October 3, 1860.24 Spalding requested

an adjournment to permit him to go to Wheeling and question witnesses

regarding the purpose of the trip to Pennsylvania. In expressing his

approval of the request, Commissioner White gave the first recorded

intimation that the affair was viewed by the plaintiff primarily as a test

case.

"These gentlemen," White said, referring to the Goshorns, "want to know

if Cleveland will enforce the fugitive law." He thought Cleveland had

reacted commendably to the challenge: "The citizens have shown a disposi-

tion to maintain order, and if we wait, I think this disposition will be in-

creased.... I wish to show to the South that a law as distasteful to us, as

a law against the slave trade is to them, can be carried out here; and that

though they have mobbed and maltreated our citizens when found among

them, that we are true and loyal to the Constitution."²⁵ Acceding to the

wish of both sides, the court granted a recess of two days, until Wednesday.

In deference to Tilden's decision, Lucy was confined in a special room

fitted out for her in the post office building.26

As the fugitive's fate thus hung in the balance, interest increased in the

motives and intentions of her masters. An article from a correspondent in

Wheeling appearing in the Plain Dealer a few days later filled in more de-

tails on the background of the Goshorns. It revealed that Goshorn (pre-

sumably the elder) was a man of $300,000 worth who "came purely as a

228                                                   OHIO HISTORY

representative man from Virginia to test the Chicago platform under the

new declarations of fidelity to law and order." He was not at all interested

in the value of the slave, then, but in maintaining a legal principle. It was

hinted that other parties in Virginia and Kentucky were preparing to re-

claim slave property in Ohio, "even in Oberlin."²⁷ The Leader, committed

to the due process of law which seemed destined to remand Lucy to slavery,

was interested in finding out whether her freedom could be purchased. Al-

though it first conveyed the information that Goshorn refused to sell the

slave until she was legally delivered to him and taken to Virginia,²⁸ it later

stated that a "most extravagant" price of $1,200 was asked, and announced

that contributions would be received at the Leader counting room.29

Both newspapers also used the adjournment to develop the political angle

of the case. The Plain Dealer pointed out that if Lucy had been from a cot-

ton state, she would be "Scott free," as those seceded states had renounced

their rights to the protection of the Fugitive Slave law. In a few months

Virginia and Kentucky would also be out of the Union, it continued, and

then fugitives could flock to Ohio without fear of reclamation.30 The Leader,

pointing to this latest northern submission to the law, renewed the Repub-

lican condition for a reciprocal southern guarantee of protection for northern

citizens, and added the demand that the southern traitors be tried and

hanged according to law.³1

When the hearing reopened on Wednesday, January 23, Spalding an-

nounced his failure to turn up the desired evidence. "Nothing now remains

that may impede the performance of your painful duty," he told the court,

and summed up the attendant emotions of a large part of the city:

We are this day offering to the majesty of constitutional law a homage

that takes with it a virtual surrender of the finest feelings of our na-

tures; the vanquishing of many of our strictest resolutions; the mortifi-

cation of a freeman's pride, and, I almost said, the contravention of a

Christian's duty to his God.

While we do this, in the City of Cleveland, in the Connecticut Western

Reserve, and permit this poor piece of humanity to be taken peaceably,

through our streets, and upon our railways, back to the land of bondage,

will not the frantic South stay its parricidal arm? Will not our com-

promising legislators cry, "Hold, enough!"³²

The failure of Spalding's Wheeling excursion, plus proof of ownership by

the claimant, sealed the verdict. Commissioner White carried out his "un-

pleasant duty" of remanding the slave to her rightful owners, at the same

time offering $100 himself towards her purchase.33 United States Marshal

Johnson, designated as the one to return the fugitive, referred to his as-

signment as "the most unpleasant duty of his life." Replying for the Goshorns,

Mr. Barlow asserted that the question did not involve the right or wrong of

slavery or the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave law, but simply the

disposition of the North towards the obedience of that law. He concluded,

"Cleveland has come up to the work manfully, and no citizen has laid a

single straw in the way, and these gentlemen from Virginia thank you for

it, and it will satisfy them more than all else."34

SARA LUCY BAGBY                                                   229

So Lucy was returned to "Wheeling where she was placed in jail and

severely punished."³⁵ She was possibly the last fugitive to be surrendered

by the North under the Fugitive Slave law. A rumor that Negroes were

planning to uncouple the railroad car in which she was traveling caused the

engineer to speed past a waiting crowd at Lima, Ohio.³⁶ "Thus was the

law executed with entire justice to the slave, and with as little shock to

the sensibilities of a liberty-loving community as is possible in the nature

of the case," commented the Herald.³⁷ The Leader praised the manner in

which the people of Cleveland had received the decision, declaring, "The

test question has been tried and the law has been submitted to. We have

done our share. Will the South do hers?"³⁸

Not so disposed to magnanimity was the Ashtabula Sentinel, which found

the case concluded before it had a chance to comment. As could be expected,

its remarks were no less truculent for their belatedness:

So it would seem that Messrs. Goshorn did not really want the poor

human being they called their slave, but they wished to see if they could

make the Western Reserve eat dirt, and swallow all the resolutions

they had ever passed on the subject of this damnable Fugitive Slave

Law. It must be very pleasant to the citizens of Cleveland to be thus

made the dirt eaters for the whole Reserve.... He [Goshorn, Sr.] not

only made them eat dirt, but rubbed it in.³⁹

Reporting to the Sentinel directly from Cleveland in that same issue. Gid-

dings echoed the same attitude he had struck towards Cincinnati's Wag-

goner case of the previous summer:

She [Lucy] had heard of Cleveland as the citadel of freedom; she

had been told that a christian community resided there.... In open

day, in the midst of civilized people, she was seized; the cold iron was

placed upon her limbs, and she was hurried to a fate far worse than

death. Men and women looked on, for they were present, consenting

to her moral death. Persons of her own complexion were told they must

not interfere to save this helpless, this friendless woman. In Africa,

they would have done it; but in Cleveland, barbarism was protected

by their public men.

The city's Republican leaders were deluded in believing that they were

obeying the law, said Giddings, because "The Fugitive Slave Act is not law

according to the definition of that term given by any approved writer of the

last century." When future generations looked back on what was done "here

on the Western Reserve in this afternoon of the nineteenth century," Gid-

dings forecast, "they will wonder, but will be unable to account for such

moral phenomenon."⁴⁰ Replying to the sharp criticism in the Sentinel and

in the Lorain News toward its stand on the fugitive slave question, the

Leader answered, "Nothing would have given more 'aid and comfort' to

seceding traitors of the South than a rescue here in Cleveland. That aid

and comfort we did not care to give, and could do no less than advise

non-resistance in this case.^"41

Other abolitionist organs, even later in their appraisal of the case, were

indisposed to let the matter rest. Writing in the Oberlin Evangelist, the

230                                                   OHIO HISTORY

Rev. James A. Thome related how a "prominent Republican citizen" had

told "the lady of a leading German republican" that the city's capitulation

had been "a necessity of the crisis; Lucy could not have been returned three

months before, nor three months after this time!" Thome wondered whether

in the light of this state of opinion the South would be appeased by the

sacrifice. He did not argue so much against "the necessity of the crisis"

as against the "needlessly officious" manner in which the Cleveland Repub-

licans had succumbed.⁴2 Evidently they had not stopped to consider that

the future generations of Lucy's issue would be potentially condemned to

enslavement as a result of their actions.

It was March before William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator pieced together

an account of the case. This radical organ spread Lucy's cause before the

North in a four-column, page one layout headed: "THE HUMAN SACRI-

FICE!" The Liberator criticized the Republicans' conduct of the case as

"A Legal Farce," despite the antislavery reputations of the defense counsel,

and pointed out that the sole question which the Clevelanders could think

of testing in their habeas corpus writ was "whether the Sheriff and jailor

could hold Lucy in durance inside the walls of the jail as well as outside,"

whereas in Wisconsin writs had been issued for the purpose of testing the

constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave law itself. Cleveland Republicans

had been complaining about the unconstitutionality of that despised law

for ten years, said The Liberator. But when the chance had come to put

their principle to the test -- not only for Lucy's benefit, but for that of all

fugitives in Cleveland -- they had let it pass untried.⁴³

The city of Cleveland came in also for its share of The Liberator's con-

tempt. Perhaps taking its cue from the comments of the Ashtabula Sentinel,

this abolition publication viewed the whole case as a deliberate plot to

humble the "very Fort Sumter of the anti-slavery garrison." "The Western

Reserve has, or had, perhaps we should say, a terribly anti-slavery character

in the South." The calculated course of the Goshorns in pursuing their claim

in Cleveland "ought to have raised up Abolitionists by the thousand, and

made every drop of Yankee blood boil to hurl back the insulting defiance."

Instead, the city could not have acted more in Goshorn's interest if he

had penned the script himself. The Liberator even went so far as to sur-

mise that perhaps Goshorn had arranged Lucy's escape in order to humiliate

the city.⁴⁴ Even in obeying the law, the Clevelanders might have behaved

with "sullen obstinacy," making the Virginian feel the thinness of their

welcome; instead, they had chosen the way "recommended by Daniel Web-

ster ... to obey with alacrity." Their surrender did not merely affect them-

selves, for it "gave the South new power to trample upon the rights of

the North, new vantage ground upon which to rest the lever of oppres-

sion."⁴⁵ The following week The Liberator printed without comment a reso-

lution passed by the Wheeling Council, thanking Marshal Johnson and

"all other citizens of Ohio who have ... given proof of their good will towards

this State, and their fidelity to the Constitution which binds the States

together."46

SARA LUCY BAGBY                                                  231

That was the end of the Bagby fugitive slave case, although the corpse,

like John Brown's body, was to emit a few more groans. The comparative

absence of violence in the case, along with its incontrovertible result, prac-

tically assured it of a dearth of publicity outside of its immediate locale,

except in the abolitionist press.⁴⁷ Furthermore, it was not the Fugitive Slave

law, but the territorial issue, which events proved to be the main stumbling

block to peace.

Abolition criticism notwithstanding, the outcome of this case did pro-

duce tangible evidence that, even on the Western Reserve, Ohio Repub-

licans would tolerate the Fugitive Slave law to preserve the Union. It

added fuel to a conservative reaction produced in the state by the crisis,

which bore fruit in the passage of an anti-miscegenation law, Democratic

victories in the spring elections, and ratification of the Corwin amendment

guaranteeing slavery in the states against interference on the part of Con-

gress. It goes without saying that the Bagby case, as well as the much

better publicized Corwin amendment, failed to exert an influence towards

a peaceable settlement of the sectional quarrel. Yet the gesture was there

and is deserving of the notice of posterity. In the months that followed,

until the formation of the Union party provided more political ammunition,

the Ohio radicals used the Bagby case as the prime example of the futility

of a moderate course.

On a more personal plane, the story appears to have resolved itself on

an ironic note. Early in June, the Sentinel related that Goshorn had been

one of the few Wheelingers to vote for secession in a late election, claiming

thereby that Cleveland and the Reserve had been duped by the southerner.48

Even the Plain Dealer was "chagrined and mortified ... to learn that the

Goshorns are rank rebels, and have forfeited all respect and consideration of

the Clevelanders, at whose hands they received such marked courtesy."⁴⁹

Lucy would seem to have had the last laugh, however, for when the Union

army arrived in Wheeling, she was liberated and Goshorn was impounded

as a prisoner of war in the same jail in which he had placed his errant

slave.50 Thus, the Civil War, which Miss Lucy's reenslavement was supposed

to help prevent, proved to be the agent which finally returned her to freedom.

THE AUTHOR: John E. Vacha is a

former graduate student at Western Re-

serve University and is now teaching at

West High Schol, Cleveland.