Intersecting in Time

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Sep 12, 2005

In March of 1854 Joshua Glover, a fugitive slave from Missouri, was captured in Racine and brought to the Milwaukee Jail. Allegedly Glover was in his shanty playing cards when his master and the marshals surprised him. He jumped up and resisted arrest. A deputy clubbed him and leveled a pistol at his head. The other deputies handcuffed him. Sherman Booth would later say that Glover "was knocked down and handcuffed, dumped mangled and bleeding into a democrat wagon, and with a marshal's foot on his neck taken to Milwaukee and thrust into the county jail."

By the next day Sherman Booth heard of the capture and, with 100 men from Racine, obtained a warrant for the slave catchers' arrest. This group came to Milwaukee and broke into the jail. It was reported that the local authorities put up no resistance. This group rescued Glover, who was sent to Waukesha for safety. From there he was sent on to Canada to safety and freedom.

But the story doesn't end with Glover's freedom and escape. The whole issue of the Fugitive Slave Law and Act were taken up by the courts in Wisconsin. The incident led to many legal complications and a great deal of litigation.

The sheriff of Racine County arrested the slave-master and those who had aided in the capture of the fugitive on a charge of assault. Garland (the slave owner) obtained his release on a writ of habeas corpus.

Booth was arrested and a grand jury found a bill of indictment against him and two others. He appealed to the Supreme Court for a writ of habeas corpus. The judges issued long opinions declaring the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 unconstitutional. Chief Justice Taney, writing for the state Supreme Court, based the decision not on the merits of the fugitive law itself but rather on the state's limited powers and jurisdiction:

The judges of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin do not distinctly state from what source they suppose they have derived this judicial power. There can be no such thing as judicial authority unless it is conferred by a Government or sovereignty, and if the judges and courts of Wisconsin possess the jurisdiction they claim, they must derive it either from the United States or the State. It certainly has not been conferred on them by the United States, and it is equally clear it was not in the power of the State to confer it, even if it had attempted to do so, for no State can authorize one of its judges [62 U.S. 516] or courts to exercise judicial power, by habeas corpus or otherwise, within the jurisdiction of another and independent Government. And although the State of Wisconsin is sovereign within its territorial limits to a certain extent, yet that sovereignty is limited and restricted by the Constitution of the United States. And the powers of the General Government, and of the State, although both exist and are exercised within the same territorial limits, are yet separate and distinct sovereignties, acting separately and independently of each other within their respective spheres. And the sphere of action appropriated to the United States is as far beyond the reach of the judicial process issued by a State judge or a State court, as if the line of division was traced by landmarks and monuments visible to the eye. And the State of Wisconsin had no more power to authorize these proceedings of its judges and courts than it would have had if the prisoner had been confined in Michigan, or in any other State of the Union, for an offence against the laws of the State in which he was imprisoned.