In the Shadow of the Civil War: Passmore Williamson and the Rescue of Jane Johnson, and: The Rescue of Joshua Glover: A Fugitive Slave, the Constitution, and the Coming of the Civil War (review)

Scholars are now recognizing the importance of the fugitive slave issue to the antebellum political and social crisis. While many post–Civil War writers emphasized the issue's importance, interest diminished in the twentieth century. Scholars of antislavery focused on the erudite Garrisonians, who feared that the fugitive slave issue could distract from immediate abolition. Lara Gara (The Liberty Line, 1961) and others debunked the excesses of Underground Railroad hagiography. Due to the work of a new generation of scholars and the initiatives of the National Park Service interest in the Underground Railroad and fugitive slaves has revived.

The fugitive slave issue and abolitionism occupy intersecting but not identical spheres. Fugitive slave cases could energize a much larger segment of the populace than just local abolitionists; they could be significant, even transformative events in their localities. Individual cases deserve close study, and these two books contribute markedly to our understanding of this complex issue.

The fugitive slave issue was particularly vital in the northern border states. Unless they escaped by sea, almost all fugitives had to enter this area, where middle state political alliances, concerns about southern comity, and fears of mass migration resulting from general emancipation reduced the influence of immediate abolitionists. A fugitive slave case, however, allowed abolitionists, humanitarians, and northern politicians to critique slavery without necessarily raising the specter of immediate abolition. Nat and Yanna Brandt's book explores the controversial 1855 rescue of Jane Johnson and her two sons, slaves of Joseph Wheeler, the U.S. ambassador to Nicaragua. As they passed through Philadelphia, the secretary of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, Passmore Williamson, persuaded them to flee. Wheeler pressed charges, and Williamson spent eight months in jail for refusing to reveal their whereabouts.

The Brandts believe that fugitive slave cases like this one humanized the slavery issue, and made abolitionists appear principled and humanistic (170–71). The case's major characters spring to life in the Brandt's vivid writing, including Williamson; his father; his long-suffering wife; his colleagues William Still and Robert Purvis; and Thomas Kane, the judge with two antislavery sons who refused to release Williamson from jail. Kane also helped decide the Christiana riot cases, and the Brandts have done us a service by broadening our understanding of him. They also capture this case's raw drama, such as when Johnson risked her freedom to testify in the trial.

The 1854 rescue of Joshua Glover was an even more epochal case. This event and the subsequent legal cases convulsed Wisconsin politics for years, resulted in state court decisions that attempted to nullify the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court. The dispute was only ended by the Civil War. H. Robert Baker's book does an excellent job discussing the case's legal and constitutional aspects. He sees the case as the last gasp of a populist antebellum constitutionalism, where the people, not the Supreme Court, are the ultimate arbiters of the constitutionality of the laws. His argument is an important contribution to our understanding of antebellum legal theory and the debate over the constitutionality of the fugitive slave law.

If these books have a flaw, it is their failure to fully understand the political significance of both these cases. The Brandts acknowledge that the Johnson case was technically not a fugitive slave case, but they fail to explain that it was a "right of transit" dispute. Williamson persuaded Johnson that she and her sons were free under Pennsylvania's 1847 personal liberty law, which immediately liberated slaves brought into the state. This changed longstanding...