Free Blacks taken in Pennsylvania

jgoodguy

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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!
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.

BTW thanks for that fact about dogs and fugitive slaves.
 

diane

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Oh, the dogs were ghastly! They were huge mastiff type dogs descended from the old Spanish war dog. They were bred especially for hunting slaves. I think they are extinct now but their closest relative is the Presa Canario. The Union soldiers shot every dog of this type they saw. Some of them came west, though. Even when I was a kid ranchers in Nevada had these huge ugly dogs trained to attack Indians. My Paiute relations just killed them on sight.
 

jgoodguy

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Oh, the dogs were ghastly! They were huge mastiff type dogs descended from the old Spanish war dog. They were bred especially for hunting slaves. I think they are extinct now but their closest relative is the Presa Canario. The Union soldiers shot every dog of this type they saw. Some of them came west, though. Even when I was a kid ranchers in Nevada had these huge ugly dogs trained to attack Indians. My Paiute relations just killed them on sight.
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The dogs the Conquistadors brought with them were Mastiff breeds who were hardly the lap variety or destined for the plate. These attack dogs, often wearing their own armor, were the common European shock and awe tactic of the period. The first documented New World use of these canine swat teams occurred in 1495 when Bartholomew Columbus, Chris’s brother, used 20 mastiffs in a battle waged at Santa Maris el Antigua, Darien with his brother employing the same approach a year later. These dogs were trained to pursue, disembowel and dismember humans and to this purpose, enjoyed a human diet in the Americas. The Spanish reveled in holding human hunts called “la Monteria infernal “ where much sport was made of chasing and killing the local men, women and children. The noted Spanish apologist Bartolme de La Casas has left us numerous accounts of the exploits of these hounds from hell and it is easy to understand why these horrific memes still prevail in the cultures of Latin America. The names of many of these dogs so esteemed by the Spaniards still live on and here are but a few:

Also
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diane

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The Spanish used these dogs in California - they were effective, that's for sure. There's a story of about 100 Pomos linking arms and jumping off a cliff into the Pacific Ocean to escape an attack by these dogs.

There's a terrible history to the old gospel song "Wade in the Water", which was about how to throw off these slave hunting dogs when you ran away.
 

dedej

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There are several works about the kidnapping of free Northern blacks into Southern slavery. There were organized gangs that did it.
Freedom at Risk: The Kidnapping of Free Blacks in America is one I remember off the top of my head.
Thanks for the recommendation! I am adding it to my reading list.

And it wasn't Minnesota -- it was Montana.

But, still it's very weird-- and I am guessing the two who are listed were free -- or children of "Free Blacks" or "Free People of Color" (FPOC) and more than likely sold into slavery.


 

jgoodguy

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Thanks for the recommendation! I am adding it to my reading list.

And it wasn't Minnesota -- it was Montana.

But, still it's very weird-- and I am guessing the two who are listed were free -- or children of "Free Blacks" or "Free People of Color" (FPOC) and more than likely sold into slavery.


IMHO folks take Dred Scott too literally. It was never enforced except against Scott and was under attack before the ink was dry with challenges creeping up the court appeal system. 3 years after the ruling, Lincoln's attorney general interpreted it as not applying to anyone except Dred Scott. Dred Scott was supposed to have ruled that no African American could be a citizen but was in actuality too vague to enforce-who decided a black man was not a citizen, the States were at the time the only ones dealing in who was a citizen, and who decided a black was too black to be white and a citizen, the Southern States taking a hard line-the one-drop rule, while the Free States had different rules.

In the 1850s and 1860s, the city's slave population was small -- only in the single digits, Lehman said. Statewide, the number of slaves sometimes approached 20, as southerners vacationed with their slaves in St. Cloud and other river towns, including the Twin Cities and Stillwater.​
Southerners were able to travel with their slaves to Minnesota because of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott decision which declared that, as property, slaves were not citizens and could not sue to win their freedom --- even in non-slaveholding states.​
 

jgoodguy

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Montana Territory did not exist until 1864.
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Before the creation of Montana Territory (1864–1889), areas within present-day Montana were part of the Oregon Territory (1848–1859), Washington Territory (1853–1863), Idaho Territory (1863–1864), and Dakota Territory (1861–1864). Montana became a United States territory (Montana Territory) on May 26, 1864. The first territorial capital was at Bannack. The first territorial governor was Sidney Edgerton. The capital moved to Virginia City in 1865 and to Helena in 1875. In 1870, the non-Indian population of Montana Territory was 20,595.[127] The Montana Historical Society, founded on February 2, 1865, in Virginia City, is the oldest such institution west of the Mississippi (excluding Louisiana).[128] In 1869 and 1870 respectively, the Cook–Folsom–Peterson and the Washburn–Langford–Doane Expeditions were launched from Helena into the Upper Yellowstone region and directly led to the creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872.​
The right of transit and sojourn AKA a slaveowner can haul his slaves around with him is a complicated subject with different States having different standards. In one place he might be safe for 6 months in another, get off the train or boat and the slave is lost to him.
 

Kirk's Raider's

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@jgoodguy ,
Thanks it's Dow v.Johnson. I got to remember that one when someone bitches and moans about Uncle Billy's whimsical stroll through the Georgia country side.
Kirk's Raiders
 

jgoodguy

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@jgoodguy ,
Thanks it's Dow v.Johnson. I got to remember that one when someone bitches and moans about Uncle Billy's whimsical stroll through the Georgia country side.
Kirk's Raiders
Be sure to drop me a link when you do drop that on them.
 
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