- Joined
- May 12, 2019
- Messages
- 7,116
- Reaction score
- 4,148
Economics reared its ugly head because Southern Slave owners did now want to risk their necks or pay slave catchers. So they complained about the Yankees not doing their duty and was a contributing factor to the Civil War though I wonder if they were thinking clearly, slaves in another nation are very hard to get back, with no fugitive slave acts or friendly courts. My hero General Spoons Butler demonstrated that in May 1861 when he told slave owners that came to collect fugitive slaves that as citizens of the CSA they had no access to US law.It also caused some interesting interpretations of the posse comitatus doctrine, which wasn't clearly defined until 1878. Pre-war, sheriffs could deputize anybody to go hunt down slaves and you'd better be doing it! (For free, to boot...) Pre-war...a lot of these slave hunters wanted hazard pay because a lot of people wanted them for target practice. Lee's army was the perfect slave posse!
BTW thanks for that fact about dogs and fugitive slaves.