Kentucky v. Dennison - Significance, Who Decides?, A Slave Girl And The Man Who Helped Her, On The Eve Of The Civil War

Kentucky v. Dennison - Further Readings

Kentucky v. Dennison - Significance

At the time, the decision was seen as a victory for Southern states' right to demand that Northern states support the institution of slavery. The decision supported the ability of a governor to refuse to extradite a fugitive from justice to another state until it was reversed by Puerto Rico v. Branstad (1987). The years before the Civil War were full of legal battles between the slave states and t…

Kentucky v. Dennison - Who Decides?

In the early 1840s, the main controversy over this question had concerned New York Governor William H. Seward. Seward had refused to send to Virginia three free African American men who had allegedly helped a slave to escape to New York. Virginia, a slave state, pointed out that each state had the right to decide what was legal and what was not. Since helping a slave to escape was illegal in Virgi…

Kentucky v. Dennison - A Slave Girl And The Man Who Helped Her

The Kentucky v. Dennison case began when Charlotte, a slave girl who lived in Louisville, Kentucky, was allowed to go with her owner, C. W. Nichols, to visit her mother in Wheeling, Virginia, where Nichols was going on business. (In some parts of the court record, his name is spelled "Nuckols.") The route Nichols chose took him through Cincinnati, in the free state of Ohio. There Charlotte met som…

Kentucky v. Dennison - On The Eve Of The Civil War

By the time the Supreme Court heard the case, most of the slave states had seceded from the Union. The whole idea of the federal government forcing the states to do anything had been put in question. Kentucky, however, was still deciding whether or not to secede. Thomas B. Monroe, Jr., the man who had first argued Kentucky's case, would become a Confederate officer and die in the Civil War. His fa…