By Todd Hatton
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkms/local-wkms-954574.mp3
Murray, KY – We continue our ongoing commemoration of the U.S. Civil War in the Commonwealth. On today's Kentucky Civil War Dispatch, we take a look at the case of two African Americans in the Commonwealth, one free, the other a slave, whose desire for freedom made it all the way to the highest court in the country.
On this date in 1861, Governor Beriah Magoffin was awaiting a U.S. Supreme Court decision he hoped would force the governor of Ohio to extradite one Willis Lago back to Kentucky. Magoffin wanted Lago to stand trial for helping a female slave named Charlotte escape from Woodford County to the Buckeye State, where slavery was illegal. Lago was a free African American. He allegedly assisted Charlotte in fleeing bondage in 1859.
What became of Charlotte is unclear; if she had a last name, it is evidently unknown. But her owner did not get her back.
Soon after Lago helped Charlotte get away, the local grand jury convened in Versailles, the county seat, and indicted him.
Magoffin sided with Charlotte's master, who demanded Lago's extradition. But Magoffin, a pro-slavery Democrat, doubted Ohio Governor Salmon P. Chase, an abolitionist Republican, would agree to Lago's return. Chase himself would be appointed Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme court in 1864 by incoming President Abraham Lincoln.
Thus, Magoffin waited to seek extradition until William Dennison became Ohio's new governor in January, 1860. But Dennison, also an anti-slavery Republican, refused to cooperate with Magoffin.
So Magoffin appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The governor said Dennison's action was unconstitutional because the national charter "was the work of slaveholders" who possessed "wisdom, moderation and prudence."
Led by Chief Justice Roger Taney of Maryland, the court majority was pro-slavery. In the notorious Dred Scott decision of 1857, the Taney court had ruled that Congress had no power to exclude slavery from the territories and that even free blacks were not citizens. Expecting a favorable ruling, Magoffin sought a writ of mandamus ordering Dennison to relinquish Lago.
On February 24th, 1861, John Stevenson of Covington, a future Kentucky governor, and Humphrey Marshall of Frankfort, who would soon to be a Confederate general, pleaded the Commonwealth's case before the high court. Ohio's attorney general represented Dennison.
Three weeks later, the high court ruled 8-0 in Kentucky v. Dennison that it was powerless to make Dennison extradite Lago. But Taney sharply criticized Dennison for not honoring Magoffin's request to send him back to Kentucky.
Northerners and Southerners condemned the ruling, but for very different reasons. Anti-slavery Northerners denounced the Taney court for rebuking Dennison. Pro-slavery Southerners, who were otherwise quick to cry "states' rights" in defense of their peculiar institution against any anti-slavery federal action, criticized Taney and the other justices for not using federal judicial might to force Dennison to surrender Lago to Kentucky authorities.
WKMS produces Kentucky Civil War Dispatches from West Kentucky Community and Technical College history professor Berry Craig. The Murray State alumnus is the author of Hidden History of Kentucky in the Civil War and True Tales of Old-Time Kentucky Politics: Bombast, Bourbon, and Burgoo.