Edward Prigg, a citizen of Harford County, Maryland, together with Nathan S. Bemis, Jacob Forward and Stephen Lewis, Jr., were indicted in York County, Pennsylvania, O. and T., for kidnapping an alleged free child of Margaret Morgan, in violation of the Pennsylvania law of 1826, which made it a felony, punishable with from seven to twenty-one years imprisonment at hard labor, to carry off, sell or detain a free negro from Pennsylvania. Prigg was the agent--and the others his assistants--of Margaret Ashmore, owner of Margaret Morgan, who escaped from her and fled to Pennsylvania in 1832. Her children, taken back to Maryland by Prigg, were born in Pennsylvania--one of them more than a year after she escaped. Under Pennsylvania law they were free; under Maryland law and the common law principle that “the brood follows the dam” they were slaves.[A] To avert the disastrous results that always follow a conflict of laws between neighbors, Pennsylvania and Maryland agreed that the facts should be the subject of a special verdict, so that after Prigg’s conviction and sentence his case might be heard and the issue it involved be determined by the highest Federal Court of final jurisdiction and of last resort. The United States Supreme Court held that the Federal Constitution self-executed its provisions; that the owner of a fugitive slave could retake him wherever found; and that the National government--not the State governments--must support and enforce this right; that the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 recognized this and left nothing on the subject to State regulation. But the Court doubted whether State magistrates or officials were bound to perform any duty imposed upon them in this respect by a Federal law; and the State statute under which Prigg was indicted was held to be unconstitutional and void. In the discussion Meredith and Hambley appeared for Prigg, and virtually for Maryland. For the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania appeared Attorney General Ovid F. Johnson (under Governor D. P. Porter); and he frankly stated that the real and substantial parties to the controversy were Maryland and Pennsylvania, whose officials came into that high Court “to terminate disputes and contentions which were arising and had for years arisen along the border line between them on this subject of the escape and delivering up of fugitive slaves. Neither party sought the defeat or the humiliation of the other. It was for the triumph of the law they presented themselves before the Court. They were engaged under an imperative sense of duty in the work of peace; and he hoped he would be pardoned if he added of patriotism also.”