Matilda Case

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Pamphlet containing legal arguments used in the defense of "The Colored Woman, Matilda" (1837)

The Matilda Case involved Matilda, a 20-year-old woman whose father, Missouri planter Larkin Lawrence, claimed to own her as his slave. In 1837, she fled from her master-father in Cincinnati, a city located in the free state of Ohio. Matilda was captured and returned to her master by order of the local courts, based on the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.

Cincinnati attorney Salmon P. Chase, in alliance with local abolitionist and publisher James G. Birney, acted in her defense. Though unsuccessful in obtaining Matilda's freedom, the arguments Chase advanced formed part of the legal basis for the radical anti-slavery Constitutionalism of the Republican Party that emerged in the 1850s and the Civil War.[1] The Matilda Case "quickly became a turning point in the history of anti-slavery politics" and "the first major abolitionist challenge to fugitive slave recaptures".[2][3]

Background[edit]

Matilda Lawrence was both the mulatto daughter and the slave of Larkin Lawrence, a Missouri planter. Matilda's mulatto mother, also a slave, raised her while serving as housekeeper on the Lawrence estate. Upon her mother's death, the 16-year-old Matilda assumed the duties of housekeeper.[4][5][6]

In 1836, Larkin Lawrence traveled with 19-year-old Matilda to the free state of New York for an extended visit. As Matilda was a "light mulatto" he successfully presented his daughter/slave - "of striking beauty and engaging manners" - as his white offspring, concealing her servile status in Missouri.[7][8][9] When Matilda implored her master-father to provide documents freeing her, he refused and made haste to return with her to Missouri. Stopping en route in Cincinnati, Ohio, Matilda fled secretly into the city when her owner rejected a final plea for freedom. Her whereabouts was concealed by local abolitionists until her owner-father departed Cincinnati several days later.[10][11]

Believing she had secured her independence, Matilda found work as a housekeeper with the well-known anti-slavery activist James G. Birney. A former slave owner, Birney was publisher for the abolitionist journal The Philanthropist. Birney claimed that he was unaware of Matilda's ancestry when he hired her, as she had divulged little about her personal history and appeared to be white.[12]

Unbeknownst to Matilda or Birney, Larkin Lawrence had engaged a slave catcher, John W. Riley, to effect Matilda's capture and return to Missouri. After a lengthy surveillance of the Birney residence, Riley and his associates obtained a warrant for Matilda's arrest and took her into custody on March 10, 1837.[13][14]

Birney quickly enlisted Cincinnati attorney and abolitionist Salmon P. Chase who had successfully represented the publisher in 1836 after an anti-abolitionist mob attacked the offices of The Philanthropist. Chase immediately demanded a writ of habeas corpus for the release of the jailed Matilda. Birney, in turn, had been charged with harboring an escaped slave in his home. The cases were handled separately by the courts. Birney and Chase collaborated closely in preparing their legal defense.[15][16][17][18]

Legal case[edit]

John W. Riley's affidavit submitted to a local magistrate called for the arrest and detention of Matilda, stating simply that she was the property of Larkin Lawrence and that she had escaped from his custody while in Cincinnati. The magistrate added that Matilda was "a colored girl".[19]

Challenging the legitimacy of the affidavit, Chase offered a number of broad and wide-ranging legal arguments in court, invoking the Somerset principle,[20] The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, the Northwest Ordinance, and the free-state statutes of Ohio. As Matilda had not fled her master from a slave state to a free state, Chase argued that no violation of Fugitive Slave Law had occurred. Chase asked the court to consider the ramifications of the case "where any person can be dragged, by any other person who chooses to set up a claim against him as a fugitive servant" in which local authorities would determine whether the individual would be reduced to a form of property.[21][22]

Chase made a "tactical" error in failing to emphasize the circumstances of Matilda's "escape" from her "master": in voluntarily bringing his slave to Ohio, Larkin Lawrence arguably forfeited his Missouri-established right of property in Matilda.[23] The defense failed to convince the presiding Judge David Kirkpatrick Este. Deciding for the plaintiff, he reaffirmed the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave law. Matilda was instantly seized by Riley's associates and carried back into slavery, "her ultimate fate unknown".[24][25][26]

The pamphlet that Chase issued on the case entitled "The Colored Woman, Matilda" (1837) set forth his legal arguments and was widely circulated. The case attracted many freed slaves to Cincinnati, many of whom many Chase defended in court cases, and earning him the sobriquet "attorney general for the fugitive slaves".[27][28][29]

Birney phase[edit]

James G. Birney was sued for allegedly violating Larkin Lawrence's property rights in violation of the constitutionally sanctioned Fugitive Slave Act. In Birney's defense, Chase maintained that the state of Ohio provided no statutes establishing property rights in persons held to service, nor the US Constitution, which defined slaves as "persons", not property. As such, he had committed no crime.[30][31] Birney was found guilty in the lower court and he appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court. There Chase relied less on his constitutional arguments and more on Birney's testimony that he was not aware of Matilda's slave status in Missouri, nor that her departure from her father from the northern shore of the Ohio River never established fugitive status for his employee. The court reversed Birney's conviction on a technicality without addressing the constitutional issues raised by Chase.[32][33]

Footnotes[edit]

  1. ^ Foner, 1970 p. 73
  2. ^ Foner, 2010 p. 43-44
  3. ^ Oakes, 2013 p. 16: See here for quoted material. And p. 16-17: Chase's defense "did not save Matilda Lawrence, [but established] the constitutional ground on which to build a national anti-slavery politics".
    Baringer, 1971, p. 87: "Of no great importance in itself, the Matilda case was the first of a long list of battles between Chase and the vested interests of slavery."
    Stahr, 2021 p. 69: See here for "first major" quote.
  4. ^ Oakes, 2013 p. 15: "'quite possibly' her master's daughter ... he told people she was his daughter" while in New York.
  5. ^ Stahr, 2021 p. 64: "probably the daughter of her master, Larkin Lawrence"
  6. ^ Baringer, 1971 p. 86: "her master, who was also her father ... owner-father ..."
  7. ^ Oakes, 2013 p. 15-16: "spent a year in New York ... intelligent, well-mannered, and beautiful as well as literate: ... she clearly had been educated"
  8. ^ Stahr, 2021 p. 64: Stahr reports that Matilda was 20-years-old in: "March 1837. She had been taken to New York one year before, and sojourned in New York."
  9. ^ Baringer, 1971 p. 86: "Matilda, a light mulatto"
  10. ^ Oakes, 2013 p. 15: Oakes reports that "a black barber" concealed Matilda until her father's departure.
  11. ^ Baringer, 1971 p. 86: "the local Underground Railroad hid her"
  12. ^ Oakes, 2013 p. 15-16: The son of abolitionist James G. Birney reported that his family "thought her white" before she revealed her circumstances to them. And: "it was unclear how much [Birney] knew about her past."
  13. ^ Oakes, 2013 p. 16
  14. ^ Baringer, 1971 p. 86: "Lawrence, meantime, hired a private detective, who tracked the girl down and arrested her in March 1837."
  15. ^ Foner, 2010 p. 43
  16. ^ Oakes, 2013 p. 16: Chase has only "one day to prepare" his defense of Matilda and Birney.
  17. ^ Stahr, 2021 p. 64-65, p. 68: Birney case was the "second phase of the Matilda case".
  18. ^ Foner, 1970 p. 74-75: Chase's arguments in the Matilda case were based largely on Birney's "anti-slavery interpretation of the Constitution ... outlined in 1836."
  19. ^ Stahr, 2021 p. 64-66
  20. ^ Foner, 2010 p. 44: See here for a brief overview of the "Somerset principle".
  21. ^ Stahr, 2021 p. 66: "Nothing in Riley's affidavit suggested that Matilda had escaped from a slave state into a free state [thus] not covered by this clause in the Constitution." See p. 67 for Chase quote.
  22. ^ Oakes, 2013 p 16-17
  23. ^ Stahr, 2021, 68-69
  24. ^ Oakes, 2013 p. 16, p. 17
  25. ^ Baringer, 1971 p. 87: "his client was ordered back into slavery."
  26. ^ Foner, 2010 p. 44: "Matilda was returned to her owner and most likely sold at a slave market."
  27. ^ Foner, 2010 p. 43-44: See here regarding the origins of anti-slavery Constitutionalism and Chase's role in introducing its precepts.
  28. ^ Stahr, 2021 p. 65, p. 69
  29. ^ Baringer, 1971 p. 87: "In Cincinnati, Chase became at once a hero to the black population. The tale of his defense of Matilda was told and retold, and Negroes, who had few rights under Ohio law, sought him when they needed legal assistance. He drew up and executed deeds for many black purchasers of real estate and performed countless other services for nominal fees or none."
  30. ^ Oakes, 2013 p. 16
  31. ^ Stahr, 2021 p. 66-67
  32. ^ Stahr, 2021 p. 68-69
  33. ^ Baringer, 1971 p. 87: "The indictment contained a serious technical flaw in that it failed to allege that Birney had knowingly assisted an escaped slave ... He won the case, and the lower court's verdict was reversed, but the high court avoided the larger issue [of slavery's constitutionality] and found for Birney on the technicality."

Sources[edit]

  • Baringer, William E. 1971. "The Politics of Abolition: Salmon P. Chase in Cincinnati". Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association.
  • Foner, Eric. 2010. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. W. W. Norton & Company. New York. ISBN 978-0-393-06618-0
  • Foner, Eric. 1970. Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War. Oxford University Press. London. ISBN 0-19-501352-2
  • Oakes, James. 2013. Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865. W. W. Norton & Company. New York. ISBN 978-0-393-06531-2
  • Stahr, Walter. 2021. Salmon P. Chase: Lincold's Vital Rival. Simon & Schuster. New York. ISBN 978-1-50119923-3
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