[Sidenote: Review of the Acts by States.]
=§ 82. Review of the acts by States.=--Of the other New England States, Maine had no personal liberty law until 1855.[284] Two years after, however, in 1857,[285] a portion of an act declaring free all slaves brought by their masters into that State was devoted to a provision "to punish any attempt to exercise authority over them."
In New Hampshire, one of the laws of 1857[286] enacted that every person holding any person as a slave for any length of time, under any pretence, should be deemed guilty of felony; but provided that this should not apply to United States officers executing any legal process.
Vermont, by an act in 1840,[287] extended to fugitives the right of trial by jury, but after three years this was repealed,[288] only to be renewed in 1850.[289]
Connecticut, as has been noticed, had no personal liberty law. Rhode Island first passed such an act in 1848.[290] This forbade State officers to take cognizance of fugitive slave cases, and the use of State jails. Another statute, in 1854,[291] extended these provisions so as to apply to the national law of 1850.
The act of 1840 was the only Personal Liberty Law of New York.[292] Pennsylvania, some seven years later, forbade the use of jails, and punished State officers for participating in fugitive slave cases.[293] It also enacted a regulation of the same character as late as 1860.
Ohio made but one provision on the subject, and that lasted but a year. Her jails were closed to suspected slaves in 1857,[294] but in 1858 this law was repealed.[295]
Michigan passed such an act in 1855,[296] with the usual clauses on the use of jails and jury trial, and imposed a fine on false testimony against the defendant.
In 1858 Wisconsin and Kansas also passed similar acts.[297]
=§ 83. Effect of the personal liberty laws.=--Since the avowed purpose of these laws was to obstruct the execution of one of the United States statutes, national and State legislation were thus brought into direct conflict; but the Fugitive Slave Law was held constitutional by the Supreme Court, and any attempt to prevent its enforcement by positive means, however righteous from an ethical standpoint, must be considered an infraction of the Constitution, and of the common understanding between the States, on which the Union was founded.[298] The provisions denying the use of State institutions and officers, though distinctly unfriendly, were not unconstitutional. Many of the Abolitionists, however, held the national law to be unconstitutional, and at the same time morally so repugnant that it ought never to be executed.[299] The State laws were brought up by South Carolina, in her declaration of the causes of secession, as one of the chief grievances against the North; and President Buchanan, in his Message of 1860,[300] said they were "the most palpable violations of constitutional duty which had yet been committed." They must certainly be classed in principle with the Nullification Ordinance of 1832. Indeed, the legislature of Wisconsin, after the Supreme Court had overridden the decision of the State courts in the case of Ableman v. Booth that the national law was contrary to the national Constitution, passed some resolutions in which a "positive defiance is urged as the 'rightful remedy'" against such legislation.[301]