In the days preceding the Civil War, the validity of the laws enacted by Congress to secure the recapture of slaves who had fled to the free States was frequently attacked in the press and on the platform. The Constitution expressly provided for such proceedings, and the Supreme Court of the United States in 1842 had pronounced the "Fugitive Slave law" of 1793 to be valid in all respects.[Footnote: Prigg _v._ Pennsylvania, 16 Peters' Reports, 539.] The principle of this decision plainly covered the later Act of 1850, but as public sentiment in the North became more and more uncompromising in its hostility to the existence of slavery under the flag of the United States, the State courts were not always strong enough to withstand the pressure to disregard precedents and let the Constitution give place to what the phrase of the time called a "higher law." In 1859, a citizen of Ohio was convicted in the District Court of the United States and sentenced to jail for rescuing a fugitive slave who had been recaptured in Ohio by an agent of his master, to whom he had been committed in proceedings under the Act of Congress. He was imprisoned in an Ohio jail, the United States then having none of their own, but placing all their convicts in State jails or prisons under a contract with the State to keep them for a certain price. His counsel applied to the judges of the Supreme Court at chambers for a writ of _habeas corpus_ against the Ohio jailer. He produced his prisoner and submitted a copy of the warrant of commitment from the District Court. The public were extremely interested in the outcome of the proceedings. The Attorney-General of the State assisted in presenting the petitioner's case. The Governor was one of the multitude present in the crowded court room. The Attorney-General declared that the position that the Supreme Court of the United States had the power to decide conclusively as to the constitutionality of the laws of the United States and so tie the hands of the State authority was untenable and monstrous. "Georgia," he said, "hung Graves and Tassel over the writ of error of this same Supreme Court. God bless Georgia for that valiant and beneficent example."[Footnote: _Ex parte_ Bushnell, 9 Ohio State Reports, 150.] It was, he continued, "a sectional court composed of sectional men, judging sectional questions upon sectional influences."[Footnote: _Ibid._, 161.]