John Gordan's book The Fugitive Slave Rescue Trial of Robert Morris:
Benjamin Robbins Curtis on the Road to Dred
Scott is imminently forthcoming from Talbot Publishing, an imprint of the Law Book Exchange. Cribbing now from the press release:
Relying on extensive surviving
original records, this book analyzes the November 1851 trial in the federal
circuit court of Robert Morris, the second black admitted to practice in
Massachusetts, for rescuing a fugitive slave from the custody of the U.S.
marshal in the federal courtroom in Boston. It demonstrates that Justice
Benjamin Robbins Curtis, a supporter of Daniel Webster and the Fugitive Slave
Act of 1850 presiding under a recess appointment, made two critical rulings
against Morris that were at odds with existing precedents. Finally, the book
contextualizes Morris’s trial among the other trials for this rescue, the
prosecutions for the attempt to rescue Anthony Burns, another fugitive slave,
in 1854, and the Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott in 1857.
As long-time readers will recall, I'm super interested in the Fugitive Slave Act (more from the southern than northern perspective) — and particularly Robert Cover's interpretation of it, as well as responses to Cover that suggest that anti-slavery judges had more flexibility than we're seen so far.
I'm very much looking forward to reading Gordan. I'm guessing that he views judges' options as limited and thus is in line with Cover. And maybe even shows that some judges went out of their way to create a law that was more proslavery than before. Jeff Schmidt will undoubtly want to weigh in on this one.