American courtrooms rarely contain moments of high drama, particularly in an arraignment. In criminal proceedings, defendants are first arraigned before a judge to review charges, set bail if relevant, and appoint legal counsel. This initial proceeding lasts only a few moments. At most a family member or two sits in the gallery. Such was not the case in Boston on February 15, 1851. Over 100 spectators and reporters packed the Boston federal courtroom with a larger mob forming outside. They were awaiting the arraignment of defendant Shadrach Minkins who had been arrested an hour earlier. When Minkins appeared before the judge, six prominent Bostonian lawyers volunteered to represent him pro bono (at no cost).

Minkins was no ordinary defendant. A year earlier he escaped slavery and hidden in Boston under an assumed name. Slavecatcher John Caphart arrived in Boston in February, 1851 and identified Minkins to federal marshals. The marshals went to Cornhill Coffee Shop where Minkins worked as a waiter and arrested him under the Fugitive Slave Act. Minkins protested loudly in the coffeeshop and in the streets as marshals led him to the federal courthouse which alerted local abolitionists. An hour later crowds of blacks, whites and reporters gathered inside and outside the courthouse.

The judge appointed counsel and postponed trial for three days to allow Minkins’ attorneys time to prepare a defense. As the court moved to new business, the crowd outside took matters into their own hands. Twenty African American men burst through heavy double doors rushing into the courtroom. Partially disguising their faces with coats and hats, five men forcibly grabbed a frightened and confused Minkins from marshals and hurried him out of the courthouse.

His liberators guided Minkins through the streets with a mixed crowd of 200 supporters following. The swift abduction left marshals with little time to react or pursue. Minkins hid in the attic of a local widow before being secreted out of town where Underground Railroad conductors guided him through New Hampshire and Vermont to the safety of Canada. Beyond the long arm of US law, Minkins settled in Montreal, and lived the rest of his life in freedom marrying an Irish woman having four children before dying in 1875 at the age of 61.

Reaction across the US followed growing divisions over the issue of slavery. Predictably the Southern response was uniformly negative. Surprisingly, the Northern reaction was mixed. For example, the Northern Democrat paper New York Express reported the event as “a deep stain upon the city of Boston.”

So what created the flashpoint in Boston’s federal courthouse? Why did some Northerners join Southerners in expressing outrage? The answers require a little explanation.

Slavery plagued the American Republic from its inception. The Spirit of ’76 generated new ideas challenging preconceptions about the meaning of liberty and individual rights. At first, founders confronted the implications for white males, but keeping other human beings in chains gnawed at the American conscience. A few founders recognized the inherent contradiction of demanding freedom for some while maintaining others in bondage. In the North where slavery was not as entrenched, states gradually emancipated slaves by 1804.

The invention of the Cotton Gin in 1793 quickly made cotton a cash crop generating enormous wealth in the South that made ending slavery increasingly unlikely. North and South embarked on different economic courses. Americans first tried to address the issue through limiting expansion. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 banned slavery north of a line running from Missouri’s southern border to the Pacific. Northern sentiment against slavery became more pronounced in the 1830s and 1840s, though was not yet unified nor strong. Nevertheless, Southerners feared slavery could be outlawed in Congress. Both sides tacitly agreed to maintain an equal balance in the Senate between slave states and free states guaranteeing Southerners veto power of any law passed in the House.

The Annexation of Texas in 1845 and resulting Mexican-American War created the first real political crisis. Southerners favored westward expansion seeking new land for largescale agrarian development. They also hoped to establish West Coast ports that could export cotton to international markets. Northern industry was unable to compete with larger, more established European manufacturers and needed cheap domestic cotton as a competitive edge. They opposed exporting cotton which raised the price of cotton.

In the 1840s, the Whig and Democrat Parties dominated American politics. Whigs and Democrats tried to reach an agreement that would permanently settle the issue of slavery in the Great Compromise of 1850. Texas and California were admitted to maintain the balance in the Senate. Congress created a new policy, popular sovereignty, for the New Mexico and Utah territories allowing both to vote on admission to the Union as free or slave states. Southerners also chafed over the Fugitive Slave Law. The original 1793 law required state courts to return escaped slaves to their masters. Increasingly, Northern state courts refused to cooperate. Congress passed a new Fugitive Slave Act that made the federal government responsible for enforcement in federal courts bypassing noncompliant state courts.

Instead of solving the problem, the Compromise heightened tensions. Northerners had largely ignored the issue of slavery as an issue in distant states. Northerners viewed the new Fugitive Slave Law as an infringement on their states rights. Southerners could use the power of the federal government to enforce slave rights in Northern communities. Shadrach Minkins was the first escaped slave to be captured and prosecuted under the federally-backed law. Abolitionists in Boston in 1851 made a forceful show that they were no longer willing to compromise on the issue of slavery.

North and South were not yet ready to go to war. The sentiments expressed above in the New York Express reflected Northern Democrats desire to maintain national unity. Developments in the 1850s drove larger wedges in national unity. The Great Compromise proved fatal to the Whig Party which disintegrated by 1852. Northern and Southern Democrats maintained unity temporarily. They abrogated the Missouri Compromise in 1854 extending popular sovereignty to all territories with the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Later in 1854, Missouri slaveholders crossed the border to vote Kansas into the union as a slave state and a border war erupted.

With popular sovereignty failing, the Supreme Court made a judicial attempt at compromise in the Dred Scott case in 1857. The Court obliterated popular sovereignty holding that slaves were property under American law and therefore, slaveholders’ rights extended across the entire US. Instead of settling the matter, Dred Scott threw gasoline on the fire. By 1860, “Bleeding Kansas” exposed popular sovereignty as a fraud and Dred Scott fatally split the Democrat Party along regional lines. Disaffected Whigs and Northern abolitionists rallied behind the new Republican Party presidential nominee Abraham Lincoln. With a divided electorate, Lincoln carried the more heavily populated North and Midwest to victory. Southern states began seceding within weeks and eight months after Lincoln’s election, hostilities opened at the First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run).

The rescue of Shadrach Minkins reflects a new Northern awareness of how slavery affected citizens of free states. It was an omen of things to come. The Fugitive Slave Act alone did not propel the US into a Civil War but it does offer us a clear moment when the tide turned towards war.

Sources:

New York Express quote and other details: Encyclopedia Virginia https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Minkins_Shadrach_d_1875#start_entry

Featured Image: “A Ride for Liberty” by Eastman Johnson c. 1862, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Boston Courtroom engraving courtesy of Wikipedia.

Boston crowd engraving courtesy of Wikipedia.

Fugitive running slave engraving courtesy of the New York Historical Society

African Americans slaves cotton farming image courtesy of PBS.

Common use standards apply to all images above.

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