middleton1993

@Book{ middleton1993,
    author = {Stephen Middleton},
    title = {The Black Laws in the Old Northwest: A Documentary History},
    address = {Westport, Conn.},
    publisher = {Greenwood Press},
    year = 1993,
}

p. 3-4: Early Ohio leaders “favorably disposed to the idea of freedom for enslaved blacks”; many had migrated from Northern states where gradual emancipation laws had been enacted, and also wanted to encourage white settlement, but this didn’t mean Ohio “welcomed black refugees … [who] consistently crossed the borders of the free states located on the fringe of slavery.”

The first Black Laws of 1804 and 1807 therefore “attempted to discourage blacks from migrating to Ohio” (p. 4) by requiring “newcomers to show proof of freedom as a condition for settlement and employment” (p. 4) and forcing “immigrants to register their names with county officials” (p. 5). Yet most of this legislation about residency and immigration was hard to enforce and was intended mostly as “prohibitive legislation” (p. 5).

On the other hand, “a list of black laws followed, denying African Americans access to public schools, welfare programs, suffrage, militia service, jury service, or testimony against a white” (p. 5). And these laws were “not merely nuisance legislation” but instead provided whites the legal grounds on which to assault African American communities (p. 5), as in the Cincinnati riot of 1829, which led to the departure of many black people from the state. Anti-black white conservatives could also use the old laws to punish abolitionists in the 1830s for violations of obscure clauses.

The Black Laws also signalled a policy of “comity” with the Upper South, as did the fact that “runaway slaves were returned after a summary process, and sometimes free blacks were illegally removed by professional slave catchers. In the name of comity, the state protected slave holders who brought black servants to Ohio temporarily” (p. 6). The state even allowed masters “to hire-out slaves in the state,” even though “these concessions violated Ohio law, which had prohibited slavery. Until the 1840s, public sentiment, the legislature, and the courts favored accommodation” (p. 6).

But things changed in the 1840s:

• a segregated school system created in the 1840s
• Supreme Court of the state “proclaimed freedom to slaves whose masters brought them, or allowed them, to enter Ohio” (p. 6)
• repeal of a portion of the Black Laws in 1849

Abolitionists also managed to win victories such as the anti-kidnapping law of 1819, bolstered by changes in 1831 (pp. 26-27), both of which required those claiming slaves in the state to go through some legal proceeding to prove that the person was in fact their property. In 1857, new laws were passed that flatly outlawed any attempt to hold or claim a slave, but also still required people claiming fugitives to establish proof of “their property in such person” (p. 31). Yet this law was repealed in 1858.

There were also a series of legislative reports on the Black Laws beginning in 1837, but “the legislature moved haltingly on the question” (p. 49) before finally repealing the laws in 1849.

Summary of Cases in Ohio related to slavery:

For the first four decades as a State, Ohio allowed slave holders to control enslaved blacks in Ohio. Moreover, slave holders sent enslaved blacks into the state as hired-out workers. Nothing in the federal or state constitutions warranted these courtesies. Rather, state leaders depended on southern trade, and they believed that any threat to slavery might jeopardize their revenue. Every year when slave holders came, they brought along their “chattels.” From time to time, therefore, enslaved blacks stayed on Ohio soil. Whether their presence violated the Ordinance or the state constitution would be decided by the courts (p. 143).

Key cases: State v. Farr (1841), in which “the Supreme Court on circuit … agreed that any person who entered Ohio with the consent of a slave holder … was automatically free” (p. 144), a doctrine that had been argued by Salmon P. Chase and James Birney as early as the 1837 case Matilda v. Lawrence.