Salmon P. Chase: Reclamation of Fugitives from Service

Reclamation of Fugitives from Service is the name under which the abolitionist Salmon P. Chase later published his 1847 brief before the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Jones v. Van Zandt. Chase would go on to become a U.S. senator, governor of Ohio, U.S. treasury secretary, and, finally, chief justice of the United States. In Reclamation of Fugitives from Service, he challenges the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, arguing that the Constitution did not allow the federal government to create or maintain slavery. Because the Constitution recognized no slaves but only persons, when a slave leaves the jurisdiction of a state where slavery is legal, he ceases to be a slave. The 1793 law deprived alleged fugitives of their Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights by seizing them unlawfully and depriving them of due process. Although the Supreme Court ruled against him, his analysis of the Constitution as a fundamentally antislavery document would become highly influential in northern abolitionist circles.