The price of the rescue: $2,850 in damages, and a $500 penalty that died in the Supreme Court

BRANCH · UNDERGROUND RAILROAD & ANTEBELLUM YEARS · Norris v. Newton, May Term 1850 · Norris v. Crocker, 54 U.S. (13 How.) 429 (1851)

Lead: Norris lost the people and sued the rescuers twice over — once for the value of the four, once for the statutory penalty — and the two suits ended in opposite directions.

In Norris v. Newton et al. he sued Leander Newton and others in the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Indiana for harboring and concealing the four, by reason of which he had lost their services. McLean's charge laid down the law the jury applied: the discharge had been void, because Norris's return had admitted his custody to be under the paramount authority of the Constitution as construed in Prigg; every step after that return was against law; and counsel — Crocker included — answered for any act beyond a counsellor's proper limits, as did every person who by words or actions aided the escape. Two witnesses valued the loss at $2,450 and $2,700. The jury returned a verdict for Norris for $2,850. A South Bend Tribune retelling of 2003, carried in the county summaries, gives the award as $2,856 against nine named defendants — Leander Newton, George Horton, Edwin Crocker, Solomon Palmer, David Jodon, William Wilmington, Lot Day, Amable LaPierre and Wright Maudlin (Modlin).

The penalty suit ran separately. In Norris v. Crocker et al. Norris sued Crocker and Elisha Egbert in debt for the $500 penalty under §4 of the Act of 12 February 1793, for obstructing, rescuing, harboring or concealing a fugitive. While the suit was pending, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 18 September 1850, with its own regime — fines to $1,000, up to six months' imprisonment, and $1,000 civil damages for each fugitive lost. The circuit judges divided and certified two questions to the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Catron answered both for the defendants: the 1850 Act repealed §4 of the 1793 Act so far as the penalty, by implication, because it covered the whole subject with new offences and different penalties; and that repeal barred the pending action. The $500 was never collected.

Instrument note: Indiana Reports was searched for a state-court Norris course. None was found — both Norris decisions are federal (McLean's circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court on certificate). The Indiana Supreme Court's fugitive-law ruling of the same season is a different county's case, Graves et al. v. State, 1 Ind. 258 (1849), from Elkhart County — printed in the traffic article below as boundary, not as this county's law.

Sources:

1. Norris v. Newton, 18 F. Cas. 322 — charge, damage estimates ($2,450 / $2,700) and the jury's $2,850 verdict, in the closing lines of the report.
2. Norris v. Crocker, 54 U.S. 429 (1851) — syllabus, certificate of division (Circuit Court, District of Indiana, May 1851 term dates as certified), and Catron, J.'s answers (sooperkanoon / studicata full text).
3. South Bend Tribune (2003) account as catalogued in the Michiana bibliography and summarised at acgsi.org — $2,856 and the nine defendants; conflict with the charge preserved above.