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The machinery, in the order it closed over this ground. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, section 4, set the first price: a $500 penalty against anyone who harbored or concealed a fugitive — the very penalty Norris later sued Crocker and Egbert for. Indiana's own Black Laws began with the 1816 constitution's bars on Black voting and militia service and hardened in 1831, when the state required Black settlers to register with county authorities and post a $500 bond for good behavior. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 federalized the hunt: commissioners, no jury trial for the seized, and for aiders a fine up to $1,000, imprisonment up to six months, and $1,000 in civil damages per fugitive lost. Then Indiana voted exclusion into its fundamental law. Article XIII of the 1851 constitution reads, in its four sections: (1) “No negro or mulatto shall come into or settle in the State, after the adoption of this Constitution”; (2) contracts with such a person are void, and whoever employs or encourages such a person to remain is fined ten to five hundred dollars; (3) the fines are appropriated for colonization of those already in the state who are willing to emigrate; (4) the General Assembly shall pass carrying laws. Article XIII was put to the voters separately on August 4, 1851, and the state's totals themselves print in conflict in the published record, unmerged: the Indiana Historical Bureau's exhibit table gives the constitution For 109,319, Against 26,755, and Article XIII For 109,976, Against 21,066 — the eighty-four percent figure the Bureau states — while the annotated constitution text carried at archive.org gives the constitution ratified 82,564 to 26,755 and Article XIII ratified 88,910 to 21,066. Both print; neither is averaged into the other. The county figure the register ordered was searched for in the published returns repeatedly in this section and was not recovered: that element closes as a named gap — settler: the Indiana Secretary of State's election returns and abstracts, 1818–1972 (WorldCat OCLC 35906269), with Kettleborough, Constitution Making in Indiana. One county-level fact does stand: only four Indiana counties voted majority-against Article XIII — Elkhart, LaGrange, Randolph and Steuben (Indiana Historical Society, citing Thornbrough) — and St. Joseph is not among them, so this county's majority voted for exclusion; the size of that majority waits on the named settler. The law's machinery produced its paper: the 1852 registration act required Negro Registers kept by the circuit court clerks, and Coy D. Robbins located fifteen extant registers statewide (Indiana Negro Registers, 1852–1865, 1994) — no St. Joseph County register is among them, and this county's register is printed here as a loss: kept once, by law, and not surviving in any collection reached. Article XIII itself was declared invalid by the Indiana Supreme Court in 1866 and not formally repealed until 1881.
Sources: Indiana Historical Bureau (in.gov): Article XIII text; the 1851 referendum exhibit table; “Being Black in Indiana”; annotated constitution text at archive.org (the conflicting totals); Indiana Historical Society, register collection guides (the four-county record; Robbins, fifteen extant registers); Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850; WorldCat OCLC 35906269 (the named settler). Read November 2026.