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Rutherford Hayes made no reference in his journal or surviving letters about the court case involving the freedom seeking Louis. Instead, remnants of the event are preserved in the memoirs of Levi Coffin and the scrapbook of James Birney. Yet his actions in the case provide a unique look into the prevailing ways that lawyers fought against the Fugitive Slave Act. He worked alongside James Birney, with assistance from Levi Coffin, to ensure that Louis would not be sent to the South and into slavery. In the end, it took extra legal action to ensure his continued freedom.

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After allegedly escaping from Kentucky, Louis made his way to Cincinnati, where he found work for a time. Then he moved to Columbus where his supposed former enslaver, Alexander Marshall, discovered his location. Marshall obtained a writ to the marshal of Columbus, Manuel Dryden. The marshal, charged with upholding the Fugitive Slave Act, caught Louis about ten miles outside the city and transferred him to Cincinnati. The anti-abolitionist Cincinnati Enquirer reported that Louis “confessed himself a fugitive, tired of liberty and anxious to return to his master.”[i]

Louis’s friends worked to ensure he had a trial before being sent South. They telegraphed John Jolliffe, a prominent fugitive slave lawyer. Anti-abolitionists such as those at the Cincinnati Enquirer derided this action, writing “crafty Abolitionists [sic] and attorneys in the city” were simply interlopers that were “determined he should not enjoy the privilege of judging for himself.” Jolliffe contacted Levi Coffin, and worked quickly to produce a writ of arrest on the enslaver for kidnapping Louis. The Cincinnati sheriff, then, waited for Marshall and Louis at the train station and took Marshall into custody.[ii]

The Fugitive Slave Law required Louis to appear before the commissioner’s court. The Cincinnati Enquirer continued to believe that Louis desired slavery and abolitionists were forcing an outcome no one else wanted. It editorialized, “It is strange that some people have such an over-weening desire to prevent the ends of justice, and defy the laws of the United States, in direct opposition to the expressed desire of the fugitive.” They had further condemnation for abolitionists, stating “The case will no doubt result in the fugitive being remanded to his master, as he desires, and the great loss of false sympathy and gas on the part of the would-be defenders of human liberty, in opposition to the recognized laws of the land.” The issues were simple and clear for the Enquirer and, seemingly, other anti-abolitionists.[iii]

This interplay between federal initiatives and local opposition is important to note since Rutherford B. Hayes was one Louis’s defenders in the commissioner’s court. Although the Enquirer compared Louis’ attorneys to fanatics, and, as they claimed, “Fanaticism and crime are not widely separated,” we see an interesting interpretation of the nature of fanaticism. Hindsight informs us that Hayes was not a fanatic, but nonetheless provided his services to determine the legality of the Fugitive Slave Act. Moreover, interpretations of the commissioner and the onlookers further display that local opposition did not always come in radical form. Rather, we see Hayes as falling in line with the political mood of the North.[iv]

During the case, Hayes’s team centered their argument on whether the commissioner’s court had the right to hear such a trial, thus questioning the federal government’s jurisdiction. Hayes first attempted to confuse the obvious fact that Kentucky was a slave holding state (since Louis was from that state). Hayes objected that the “law of the state not to be proved by oral testimony, and certainly not by men who don’t profess to know anything about the law.” After the prosecution brought forth two experts, Hayes retorted that “printed laws are the best evidence.” The next day he continued, “The usual mode of authenticating foreign laws, is by an exemplification of a copy under the great seal of the State,” or other equally arduous means. He concluded “No such testimony has been offered in this case to show the existence of slavery in Kentucky,” and that the case needed to be “tried by the rules of evidence in criminal cases.” While this might seem like a blatant attempt at obfuscation, Hayes was engaging with the predominant Northern belief in the Somerset axiom that unless slavery is positively established it is illegal.[v] Image: James Birney

His associate, the famously reformed slave owner James Birney, further laid out the arguments in favor of referring the case to a different court. Birney brought forth evidence of a separate case in New York, which denied the return of a freedom seeker since the individual had fled before the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act—a condition that applied to Louis. This case, adjudicated by U.S. Federal Judge Alfred Conkling, concluded that slaves who escaped before the passage of the law were not subject to that law since Congress worded it as binding to escaping slaves or slaves who shall escape, not who have escaped. The prosecution, led by Col. F. T. Chambers, “accused Judge Conkling of weakness and cowardice [and] alleged that his decision was the result not of honest conviction, but of a desire to sail with popular opinion.” Instead, Chambers felt that Conkling contradicted decisions made by Supreme Court Justice John McLean who oversaw Ohio’s Circuit Court.[vi] 

On what would become the final day of the proceedings (Thursday, October 20), Chambers and Jolliffe argued over a continuance of the case until Saturday. Jolliffe presented a telegraph from Columbus lawyers Spalding and Carrington who argued there was new and vital testimony. Moreover, Judge McLean had a writ of habeas corpus for Louis but was waiting on whether Commissioner Carpenter was going to dismiss the case. Carpenter felt that he could not release Louis since he would then be free without means of detaining him in the event McLean ordered the writ, nor could he continue until he heard the new testimony. According to Levi Coffin the commissioner was “slow and tedious,” and “spoke in a low tone.” This required spectators in the packed courthouse to lean in and pay close attention to hear the possible verdict. Coffin commented that “they expected every moment to hear the negro consigned to slavery.” In the midst of this discussion, the courtroom burst into a loud commotion.[vii]

An onlooker reportedly screamed, “An Escape!,” and the marshal discovered that Louis was no longer in his seat. Coffin, who claimed to be “standing close behind him,” said that Louis slowly pushed his chair back, and was encouraged by the crowd when someone placed his hat on Louis’ head. He then moved toward the west side of the courtroom “into the crowd of colored people,” and out the door. One reporter argued, “The darkies, with whom the room was filled, showed the biggest eyes and the broadest mouths we have seen in a long time.” Coffin concurred, “there was an extensive display of grinning ivories among the crowd of colored people”

The marshal cried, “Louis is gone,” and ran for the door. Newspapers printed a story claiming Louis “took out a writ of Habeas Corpus on his own account, and taking himself into his own custody, walked out unperceived, and has not been heard of since.”[viii]

Louis eventually made his way to Canada. Coffin mentions that he, with other abolitionists, dressed him as a woman on multiple occasions, hid him in a church, and took him by carriage to Sandusky and then to Canada. To misdirect his pursuers they sent a telegram from Columbus to Cincinnati saying he had passed through there on the way to Cleveland. The Cincinnati Times printed the story and other newspapers picked it up. The Buffalo Advocate printed, “It is rumored that the slave Lewis [sic], who escaped from the Court House day before yesterday, arrived in Cleveland last night, and immediately crossed the lake into Canada.” His escape caused such a stir that it created possibly apocryphal stories of abolitionists applying a chemical “which entirely concealed his true color, and in this way he was safely forwarded over the aforesaid railroad.” One pro-slavery account lamented, “There is no security for this species of property so long as men of wealth and high social position will aid its escape.”[ix]

Louis’ case provides insight into how local actors moved against the federal initiative. The fact that the audience allowed the slave to escape and there existed established networks of securing Louis’ arrival to Canada demonstrate the way that citizens were willing to combat what they viewed as improper federal intrusion. It also shows the actions of Hayes working within the judicial system to undermine the Fugitive Slave Act, and exhibiting his understanding of the prevailing legal arguments over slavery. Moreover, considering his transformation into embracing Northern Republican arguments, we can see him as a symptom of growing distaste of Southern “overreach.” He continued defending slaves on at least one additional occasion.

 

[i] Levi Coffin, “Reminiscences of Levi Coffin,” Cincinnati: Western Tract Society, 1876, 548-554; James Birney Scrapbook, Cincinnati Historical Society, pg. 43; Cincinnati Enquirer, October 18, 1853, pg. 3.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] James Birney Scrapbook, CHS, pg. 44; Cincinnati Enauirer, October 18, 1853, pg. 3.

[iv] Cincinnati Enquirer, October 18, 1853, pg. 3.

[v] James Birney Scrapbook, CHS, pg. 43-44.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Ibid; Coffin, 550.

[viii] Birney Srapbook, 45; Coffin, 550; The Herald of Freedom, Wilmington, Ohio, November 4, 1853, pg. 2.

[ix] Coffin, 550; The Advocate, Buffalo, New York, October 27, 1853, pg. 3; The Louisville Daily Courier, Louisville, Kentucky, December 2, 1853, pg. 2.