The Woman Passing Through

A slaveholder travelling from Kentucky to Louisiana passed through a free state with an enslaved woman. While they were in the free state, the woman left without her owner's consent. A local man was indicted under a state law making it a crime to harbour or secrete any enslaved person owing service in another state, punishable by a fine of up to $500 or six months in jail. The indictment charged that he knowingly harboured and hid the woman. He challenged the indictment in law rather than contest the facts, and the trial court fined him. The defence argued that an enslaved person brought voluntarily into a free state became free there, and that the state law conflicted with the federal Constitution and fugitive slave legislation.