The Hunters' Lodge was the last of a series of secret organizations formed in 1838 in the United States during the Rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada. The organization arose in Vermont among Lower Canadian refugees and spread westward under the influence of Dr Charles Duncombe and Donald McLeod, leaders of the short lived Canadian Refugee Relief Association, and Scotland native William Lyon Mackenzie, drawing in support from many different areas in North America and Europe. They also absorbed Henry S. Handy's 'Secret Order of the Sons of Liberty' in Detroit into a Grand Lodge in Cleveland.
The Fugitive Slave Act or Fugitive Slave Law was a law passed by the 31st United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern interests in slavery and Northern Free-Soilers.
In the United States, fugitive slaves or runaway slaves were terms used in the 18th and 19th centuries to describe people who fled slavery. The term also refers to the federal Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850. Such people are also called freedom seekers to avoid implying that the enslaved person had committed a crime and that the slaveholder was the injured party.
The Republic of Canada was a government proclaimed by William Lyon Mackenzie on December 5, 1837. The self-proclaimed government was established on Navy Island in the Niagara River in the latter days of the Upper Canada Rebellion.
Harrison Jackson Reed was an American editor and politician who had most of his political career in Florida. He was elected in 1868 as the ninth Governor of Florida, serving until 1873 during the Reconstruction era. Born in Littleton, Massachusetts, he moved as a youth with his family to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he had a grocery store and started farming. He also owned and edited the Milwaukee Sentinel for several years.
Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 41 U.S. 539 (1842), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 precluded a Pennsylvania state law that prohibited Blacks from being taken out of the free state of Pennsylvania into slavery. The Court overturned the conviction of slavecatcher Edward Prigg as a result.
The fugitive slave laws were laws passed by the United States Congress in 1793 and 1850 to provide for the return of slaves who escaped from one state into another state or territory. The idea of the fugitive slave law was derived from the Fugitive Slave Clause which is in the United States Constitution. It was thought that forcing states to return fugitive slaves to their masters violated states' rights due to state sovereignty and was believed that seizing state property should not be left up to the states. The Fugitive Slave Clause states that fugitive slaves "shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due", which abridged state rights because apprehending runaway slaves was a form of retrieving private property. The Compromise of 1850 entailed a series of laws that allowed slavery in the new territories and forced officials in free states to give a hearing to slave-owners without a jury.
The Oberlin–Wellington Rescue of 1858 in was a key event in the history of abolitionism in the United States. A cause celèbre and widely publicized, thanks in part to the new telegraph, it is one of the series of events leading up to Civil War.
Joshua Glover was a fugitive slave who escaped from the United States to Canada in the 1850s. His escape from recapture was part of the chain of events that led to the Civil War and the end of slavery in the U.S.
Sherman Miller Booth was an abolitionist, editor and politician in Wisconsin, and was instrumental in forming the Liberty Party, the Free Soil Party and the Republican Party. He became known nationally after helping instigate a jailbreak for a runaway slave in violation of the Fugitive Slave Act.
Andrew Galbraith Miller was an American lawyer and judge. He was the first United States district judge of the Eastern District of Wisconsin after having served as the only Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Wisconsin. Prior to Wisconsin statehood, he served as a justice of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin Territory.
Rufus Paine Spalding was a nineteenth-century politician, lawyer and judge from Ohio. From 1863 to 1869, he served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. He also served as a justice of the Ohio Supreme Court from 1849 through 1852 and as a member of the Ohio House of Representatives from 1839 through 1842.
Nullification, in United States constitutional history, is a legal theory that a state has the right to nullify, or invalidate, any federal laws which they deem unconstitutional with respect to the United States Constitution. There are similar theories that any officer, jury, or individual may do the same. The theory of state nullification has never been legally upheld by federal courts, although jury nullification has.
The Patriot War was a conflict along the Canada–United States border in which bands of raiders attacked the British colony of Upper Canada more than a dozen times between December 1837 and December 1838. This so-called war was not a conflict between nations; it was a war of ideas fought by like-minded people against British forces, with the British eventually allying with the US government against the Patriots.
Ableman v. Booth, 62 U.S. 506 (1859), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court unanimously held that state courts cannot issue rulings that contradict the decisions of federal courts, overturning a decision by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin. The Court found that under the Constitution, federal courts have the final power to decide cases arising under the Constitution and federal statutes, and that the States do not have the power to overturn those decisions. Thus, Wisconsin did not have the authority to nullify federal judgments or statutes. For example, it is illegal for state officials to interfere with the work of U.S. Marshals acting under federal laws. The Ableman decision emphasized the dual form of American government and the independence of State and federal courts from each other.
Edward Vernon Whiton was an American lawyer, jurist, and Wisconsin pioneer. He was the first elected Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, serving on the Supreme Court from its creating in 1848 until his death in 1859. He had previously served in the Wisconsin Territory legislature and was a framer of Wisconsin's constitution.
Edward George Ryan was an Irish American immigrant, lawyer, and Wisconsin pioneer. He was the 5th chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Samuel Crawford was an Irish American immigrant, lawyer, and Wisconsin pioneer. He was one of the first elected justices of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 1853. He was also the first incumbent Wisconsin Supreme Court justice to be defeated seeking re-election.
Luther Swift Dixon was an American lawyer, jurist, and Wisconsin pioneer. He was the 4th chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, serving from 1859 to 1874. He previously served as a Wisconsin circuit court judge and district attorney in Columbia County, Wisconsin.
Byron Paine was an American lawyer, judge, and Wisconsin pioneer. He was a justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court from 1867 until his death in 1871, and also served on the court from 1859 to 1864, interrupting his judicial service to become an officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War. As a lawyer, he was responsible for two of the most important civil rights cases of early Wisconsin history—He represented abolitionist Sherman Booth in the case of Ableman v. Booth at the Wisconsin Supreme Court, in which the Wisconsin court chose to nullify enforcement of the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. He later represented Ezekiel Gillespie in the 1866 case of Gillespie v. Palmer, which resulted in the Wisconsin Supreme Court extending voting rights to African Americans in Wisconsin.
