Undergraduate Thesis: How 'Prigg v. Pennsylvania' Inadvertently Pushed the Nation Closer to Civil War

Associate Justice Joseph Story

As my final semester approaches as an undergraduate at the University of Louisville, I am in the midst of working on what ought to be my crowning academic achievement: completing an undergraduate thesis. A brief excerpt is below:

“Decided by the Supreme Court of the United States twenty years before the Civil War, Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842) uniquely encompassed a clash of state and federal law on the issue of fugitive slaves. In light of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, Associate Justice Joseph Story overturned a Pennsylvania law barring the forcible extradition of fugitive slaves to the state from whence they fled. While its contemporaries decried the decision’s apparent appeasement of Southern interests and its distortion of historical fact, Joseph Story’s majority opinion unintentionally undermined the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793; for, though Story held the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 as constitutional, he did not require states to assist federal law enforcement in its execution. In this way, Prigg crippled the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793,  precipitated the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, contributed to the controversy in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1856), and inadvertently pushed the nation closer to the Civil War. In all aspects, this case illustrated the growing tension within the United States over the larger question of slavery.”

As it draws closer to completion, I will upload a copy for the interested reader. Today, much ground remains to be covered. But much more lies behind me.

- Ben Shepard, Class of 2012