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“A War Between Officers”: The Enforcement of Slavery in the Northern United States, and Of the Republic for Which It Stands, Before the Civil War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 1998

KAREN ORREN
KAREN ORREN
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Abstract

I will begin this essay with a fugitive slave case in my home state of California, Ex parte Archy, decided by the state Supreme Court in 1858.9 Cal. 147 (1858). A full narrative of the case is in Paul Finkel man, “The Law of Slavery and Freedom in California, 1848–1860,” California Western Law Review 17 (1981): 437–464. While he lived in Mississippi, Archy (Lee), nineteen years old, was the slave of a man named Charle s Stovall. In 1857, Stovall brought Archy with him to California on a visit for health reasons, planning to stay no more than eighteen months. Having sold his wagon and team before crossing the Sierras, Stovall bought a farm, moved to Sacramento, and open ed a school. He hired Archy out to another man, but after a few weeks, when the slave became ill, he put him on a river steamer to San Francisco with the intention of shipping him back to Mississippi in the custody of an agent. Archy escaped.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in American Political Development , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , October 1998 , pp. 343 - 382
Copyright
1998 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Versions of this paper were presented at the Annual Meetings o f the Social Science History Association, 1993, and the Law and Society Association, 1994. The author thanks two anonymous reviewers for Studies, Ellen Meiksins Wood, Steve Skowronek, and Joyce Appleby for comments on an earlier draft, Pam Singh and Michael Goodhart for research assistance, and Paul Finkelman for help with an evasive citation.