The reasons for the growing sectional divide between North and South in the decades leading up to the American Civil War have, of course, been the subject of intense historical and popular debate. Whilst most would now agree that slavery was at the heart of the conflict, the ways in which divisions over the peculiar institution played out in politics, in the press, between individuals, and between states are varied and deeply complex. In order to shed further light upon the turbulence of the 1850s, Steven Lubet adds a new arena of debate: the northern courtroom. Fugitive Justice details the conflicts over the Fugitive Slave Act (passed as part of the Compromise of 1850), and confirms an already widely held view: that far from easing tensions, the Act only served to exacerbate the sectional discord. As southern slaveholders insisted that the law be followed, and the Act enforced, northern abolitionists began to appeal to a “higher law,” and, crucially, the slaves themselves continued to claim their freedom by running away. Those enslaved men and women who refused to accept their bondage, along with those whites and free blacks who refused to allow them to be returned to slavery, play a central role in Lubet's narrative.

Lubet begins by outlining the tensions over runaway slaves that dated from the Constitution's Fugitive Slave Clause, and then follows three of the most significant trials that followed the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act: that of Caster Hanway in Christiana, Pennsylvania in 1851; that of Anthony Burns in Boston, Massachussets in 1854; and that of the rescuers of John Price in Oberlin, Ohio in 1859; before concluding with John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry later that year. These trials provide compelling evidence for Lubet's central arguments: that abolitionists became increasingly militant in their appeals to a “higher law” over the course of the 1850s, and that slavery was a pervasive and contentious local issue in the North as well as the South. Abolitionist defense lawyers were frequently caught between their radical instincts and their legal options: should they follow public opinion and resort to violence, dishonesty, or the “higher law,” or should they attempt a pragmatic approach based on evidence or legal technicality? Judges, similarly, were forced to choose between their role as advocates of the law and their own moral sentiments. As Lubet puts it, “How could something so evil be treated so routinely by such otherwise fair-minded men?” (3).

Fugitive Justice thus adds a great deal to what we already know about the coming of the American Civil War. Lubet points out that as these wranglings were not taking place on an abstract level in Congress, nor on distant southern plantations, but on the streets of Boston and Oberlin, northerners could no longer ignore the violence of slavery. Indeed, it was not a fire-eating planter in South Carolina, but the attorney general of Ohio, Christopher Wolcott, who raised the seemingly secessionist rallying cry “LET COLLISION COME” in May 1859 (309). It is Lubet's emphasis on the people involved in these cases, though, that is the real strength of Fugitive Justice. This is not merely the legal history of a particularly significant Act, but a story of real men and women fighting for their lives and the lives of others that both is very well written and has exceptional attention to detail. The individual characters are key to understanding exactly why events unfolded as they did, from the captured fugitive slave Anthony Burns (who knew far better than his abolitionist attorneys that it was not in his interest to anger his master, and who almost paid with his life for their failed attempt to free him) to the sympathetic Judge Hiram Willson (who reduced the sentence of black rescuer Charles Langston after hearing his emotional appeal to the God-given right not to be enslaved).

An enjoyable and at times heart-wrenching story of law versus people, Fugitive Justice is thus a must-read for anyone interested in slavery and the origins of the Civil War. It also raises important questions of a wider nature: what should the relationship be between the Constitution, the law, and the people? How much flexibility should judges have in sentencing? Is it legitimate to break the written law, or even to kill, in the name of a “higher” law? John Brown concluded that it was, and in 1864, in the middle of the bloody war that followed decades of tension, the Fugitive Slave Act was finally repealed.