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Lemmon v. People Court of Appeals of New York March 1860 20 N.Y. 562 (1860) Few issues so strained the bonds of friendship and judicial comity (the respect by one state or jurisdiction shown to another state or jurisdiction of the formal paper, status, and property of another state) than the issue of sojourning slaves. Defined as property under the laws and traditions of border and southern states, by the 1850s northern and midwestern states no longer recognized property in persons and sought to avoid the presence of slavery on their soil. Yet, southern businessmen and travelers, commuting with their baggage and their property (their personal slaves) occasionally had to transit through free states during the course of their business trips or personal voyages. As a result, slave owners found themselves in free states, not seeking permanent residence or for the purpose of selling their slave property but to change ships or trains to reach their final destination. In this case, Juliette Lemmon, traveling with eight of her slaves and her husband , Jonathan, left Richmond, Virginia (a slave jurisdiction) bound for Texas (another slave jurisdiction). But, to match up with a ship bound for the Texas coast, the Lemmons traveled to New York City (a non-slave jurisdiction). Once there, the presence of the slaves on Manhattan Island became known to a local antislavery activist, who swore out a writ of habeas corpus petitioning the local court to free the eight blacks, arguing that they were being unlawfully confined. At first instance, the judge heard the issues and freed the eight individuals. The Lemmons then appealed to the Supreme Court (a district court in New York state), and that court upheld the first judge’s decision to free them. After that loss, the Lemmons appealed to the highest appellate court in New York state, the Court of Appeals, which handed down this ruling in March 1860. Documentary History of the American Civil War Era 226 This case is important both for what it reveals about the growing problem of comity between the states and the increasing sectionalism in law in the turbulent decade of the 1850s. It is also important because observers at the time feared that if appealed to the United States Supreme Court, with Chief Justice Roger B. Taney presiding, and in light of his 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, a majority of the justices might decide slavery existed nationally and that free states (not just free territories, as decided in Dred Scott) may not prohibit slavery from their soil in any manner. A “second Dred Scott” decision might result in “slavery national” versus “freedom national,” as supported by the new Republican Party and most clearly articulated by Salmon P. Chase of Ohio. Though this case never reached the United States Supreme Court, this decision suggests just how strained were the legal ties that bound the Union in 1860. prior history: Appeal from the Supreme Court. On the 6th day of November, 1852, Louis Napoleon, a colored citizen of this State, made application upon a sufficient petition and affidavit to Mr. Justice Paine of the Superior Court of the city of New York, for a writ of habeas corpus to be directed to one Jonathan Lemmon and the keeper of house No. 3 Carlisle street, New York, requiring them to bring before said justice the bodies of eight colored persons, one man, two women and five children, who on the day preceding were confined and restrained of their liberty on board the steamer City of Richmond, in the harbor of New York, and were taken there from on the night of that day to No. 3 Carlisle street, and there detained under the pretence that they were slaves. The writ accordingly issued, and on the same day one of the constables of the city of New York brought up the eight colored persons, who appeared to be known only by their christian names as Emeline, Robert, Lewis, Amanda, Nancy, Ann, Lewis and Edward. Lemmon made a return to the writ under oath, in which he averred that the eight persons named were the slaves and property of Juliet Lemmon his wife, who had been the owner of such persons as slaves for several years, she being a resident and citizen of the State of Virginia: that service and labor as slaves was due by them under the Constitution and laws of Virginia: “that the said Juliet, with her said slaves, persons or property, is now...

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