Harvard Law School placed Rutherford B. Hayes in the hotbed of abolitionism. He had experienced Northeastern abolitionism before, but at Harvard he remained for nearly two years at the epicenter of the movement. So well received was abolitionism that the electorate there gladly sent John Quincy Adams to Congress for 17 years straight (and perhaps longer if he had not died in office). Although Hayes listened to the “Old Man Eloquent” talk on multiple occasions, he never warmed up to the ex-president’s defense of abolitionism. Instead, Hayes’s thoughts were much more aligned with another famous American he met at Harvard, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story.
Story, who was also the Dane Professor of Law at Harvard, might not be as well remembered as JQA. But he was an integral part of the early nineteenth-century Supreme Court, writing important opinions on The Amistad, Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, and Prigg v. Pennsylvania cases. And, being the youngest person ever nominated to this highest court (just 32 years old), he served a robust 33 years.
Hayes was a student at Harvard during Story’s tenure. In fact, he identified Story as one of the reasons he decided to leave his study under Thomas Sparrow in Columbus for Harvard Law. Upon meeting him, he noted, “His manner is very pleasant, betraying good humor and fondness for jesting. His most important directions were: Keep a constant guard upon temper and tongue.” Perhaps Hayes already had that social tendency in his pocket, but hearing it from Story could only reify what would become one of his enduring character traits.
A few days after arriving at Harvard, Hayes’s glowing opinion of Story only solidified:
“He is generally very interesting, often quite eloquent … as a lecturer he is a very different man from what you would expect of an old and eminent judge; not but that he is great, but he is so interesting and fond of good stories. His amount of knowledge is prodigious.”
A man of whom Hayes spoke fondly of undoubtedly had an impact on his views. And, perhaps, Story’s views on slavery gave Hayes something to ponder. But Story showed a conservative stance on the topic. He never declared his intentions as “abolitionist,” nor do his rulings particularly come across as pushing the envelope. He attacked the institution in the areas when he felt it was unlawful, i.e. international slave trade, yet seemed to uphold the institution as long as it remained at the state level. This divergence between federal acquiescence of the slavery issue at the state level was debated often under the context of “positive law.”
A positive law is the opposite of a natural law. In the case of slavery, states could only be slave states if their law “positively” declared that slavery was legal. If a state did not declare slavery legal, then it was “naturally” illegal.
This carried quite a bit of debate in the United States, because it led to disputes over state vs. federal jurisdiction. And, of course, the Supreme Court had to handle a number of cases that delineated where the boundaries of this jurisdiction lied. (Both of Hayes’s known fugitive slave cases involved elements of this conflict—stay tuned for information on these later.)
For example, in Story’s famous opinion on the Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee case, he (writing for the majority) ruled that federal law held supremacy over state courts simply because there needed to be uniformity of the law. And, just because states could hear cases with federal implications, did not mean that the U.S. Supreme Court did not have oversight. This was all in context of a fateful Hartford Convention that questioned the unity of the states. While this case was not specific to the question of slavery, the question of state laws and federal laws definitely held a strong presence in the slavery question.
In the United States v. Libellants of Schooner Amistad case, of which Story wrote the majority opinion, Story showed his willingness to defend potential slaves. This case came to the Supreme Court after a group of Africans, who were kidnapped in their home country and transported on the schooner Amistad, took the ship, killed a number of the ship crew, and landed in the United States. Since this event occurred after the international slave trade was declared illegal, there were a number of considerations to debate…many of which were in favor of the kidnapped Africans. Story, alongside a 7 to 1 majority in the Court, argued that the kidnapped Africans should be freed and allowed to return to their home. Image: Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story
Yet, Story’s argument in this case did not necessarily show a strong anti-slavery stance. It only confirmed the illegality of the international slave trade in U.S. law (the U.S. prohibited the international slave trade in 1808). Story wrote, “When the Amistad arrived, she was in possession of the negroes, asserting their freedom; and in no sense could they possibly intend to import themselves here, as slaves, or for sale as slaves.” Story argued against “unlawful” slavery, which is important to delineate since this episode only proves Story’s focus on the law, not an attack on slavery itself.
Story’s focus on the supremacy of what was legal rather than moral objections to slavery itself found a ready student in Hayes. And Hayes praised Story even further for a case that consigned a woman and her children to slavery. In this case, Prigg v. Pennsylvania, we see a different side to Story’s, and Hayes’s, thinking.
This topic will be explored in the next entry.