Slavery | The Underground Railroad Aided Many Runaway Slaves

During the 1830–1860 era, fugitive slaves accumulated a literature and lore of their own. Some were famous as cases, rather than individuals. The Prigg Case (1842) referred to the attorney for a slave owner, not to Margaret Morgan, a runaway slave who had fled from Maryland to Pennsylvania, and whose forcible return to slavery tested a Pennsylvania law making it illegal to carry a Negro out of the state for purposes of enslavement. The Latimer Case of the same year did refer to a runaway slave, George Latimer, seized in Boston for return to Norfolk, Virginia. The case...

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