Salmon P. Chase: Reclamation of Fugitives from Service

A Student’s Guide to Essential Primary Sources
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Salmon P. Chase:Reclamation of Fugitives from Service
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Abstract

Reclamation of Fugitives from Service is the name under which the abolitionist lawyer Salmon P. Chase published his 1847 brief before the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Jones v. Van Zandt. The case challenged the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, by which people all over the United States, whether in a slaveholding state or not, were required to return slaves as property to their slaveowners. A former slaveholder named John van Zandt turned abolitionist and began helping the Underground Railroad in Ohio spirit slaves away to Canada in defiance of the act.

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