Massachusetts Personal Liberty Act (1855)

Summary

 In response to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, a number of northern states passed “personal liberty” laws, which sought to protect their citizens from false arrest as “runaway slaves.” These laws guaranteed the writ of habeas corpus, the right to a jury trial, and other procedural devices that not only protected the accused, but also made it difficult (and costly) for slave owners to prove their case in court. These personal liberty laws infuriated Southern states, which insisted that these laws were intended to thwart the operation of the Fugitive Slave Act and amounted to a betrayal of the original constitutional “compact.” Abolitionists in the North, on the other hand, insisted that personal liberty laws simply took advantage of the federalist structure of the Constitution and the rights of the people in the northern states to protect their citizens.  Federalism remained a key component of the Republican platform (expressly so in the 1860 platform) and was often invoked by the moderate Republicans in the Reconstruction Congress as an important principle of constitutional liberty.

Selected by

Laura F. Edwards

Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor in the History of American Law and Liberty, and Professor of History at Princeton University

Kurt Lash

E. Claiborne Robins Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Richmond

Document Excerpt

Sect. 3. The writ of habeas corpus may be issued by the supreme judicial court, the court of common pleas, by any justice’s court or police court of any town or city, by any court of record, or by any justice of either of said courts, or by any judge of probate; and it may be issued by any justice of the peace, if no magistrate above named is known to said justice of the peace to be within five miles of the place where the party is imprisoned or restrained, and it shall be returnable before the supreme judicial court, or any one of the justices thereof, whether the court may be in session or not, and in term time or vacation.

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            Sect. 6. If any claimant shall appear to demand the custody or possession of the person for whose benefit such writ is sued out, such claimant shall state in writing the facts on which he relies, with precision and certainty; and neither the claimant of the alleged fugitive, nor any person interested in his alleged obligation to service or labor, nor the alleged fugitive, shall be permitted to testify at the trial of the issue; and no confessions, admissions or declarations of the alleged fugitive against himself shall be given in evidence. Upon every question of fact involved in the issue, the burden of proof shall be on the claimant, and the facts alleged and necessary to be established, must be proved by the testimony of at least two credible witnesses, or other legal evidence equivalent thereto, and by the rules of evidence known and secured by the common law; and no ex parte deposition or affidavit shall be received in proof in behalf of the claimant, and no presumption shall arise in favor of the claimant from any proof that the alleged fugitive or any of his ancestors had actually been held as a slave, without proof that such holding was legal.

            Sect. 7. If any person shall remove from the limits of this Commonwealth, or shall assist in removing therefrom, or shall come into the Commonwealth with the intention of removing or of assisting in the removing therefrom, or shall procure or assist in procuring to be so removed, any person being in the peace thereof who is not “held to service or labor” by the “party” making “claim,” or who has not “escaped” from the “party” making “claim,” within the meaning of those words in the constitution of the United States, on the pretence that such person is so held or has so escaped, or that his “service or labor” is so “due,” or with the intent to subject him to such “service or labor,” he shall be punished by a fine of not less than one thousand, nor more than five thousand dollars, and by imprisonment in the State Prison not less than one, nor more than five years.

            Sect. 9. No person, while holding any office of honor, trust, or emolument, under the laws of this Commonwealth, shall, in any capacity, issue any warrant or other process, or grant any certificate, under or by virtue of an act of congress, approved the twelfth day of February, in the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three, entitled “An Act respecting fugitives from justice and persons escaping from the service of their masters,” or under or by virtue of an act of congress, approved the eighteenth day of September, in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty, entitled “An Act to amend, and supplementary to, ‘An Act respecting fugitives from justice and persons  escaping from the service of their masters.’” or shall in any capacity, serve any such warrant or other process.