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The Penn test is stated first, at the strength it was run: penalty suits were searched under Penn Township and Osceola party names in the Indiana Supreme Court reports and the federal record, and no penalty suit under any Penn or Osceola party name exists in the record searched — tested negative. The price that the record does carry belongs to the boundary case, and it comes in two instruments. The first is the damages action: Norris v. Newton et al. (1850), Norris's federal suit for harboring and concealing Lucy, Lewis, George and James after the South Bend discharge; a Boone County Public Library account (September 6, 2024) reports a $2,500 verdict for Norris, and that figure is printed here at that flagged, secondary strength — the Federal Cases text stands open for the verdict line to be re-read against it, and until it is, $2,500 is a reported figure, not a read one. The second instrument reached the Supreme Court of the United States: Norris v. Crocker et al., 54 U.S. 429 (13 Howard 429), December Term 1851 — an action of debt for the $500 penalty under section 4 of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, brought against Sheriff Crocker and Judge Egbert themselves, the two officers of the South Bend rescue. The Court held that the Act of 1850 had repealed the 1793 penalty by implication, and that the repeal barred Norris's pending action: the $500 was never collected. The statutory price list around the case completes the article: the 1850 Act exposed an aider to a fine of up to $1,000, imprisonment up to six months, and $1,000 in civil damages for each fugitive lost — the machinery under which every act of help on this corridor was priced, whether or not a suit followed. Verdict: on this ground, no price was ever exacted in any suit the record holds; the corridor's documented price is the boundary case's — a reported $2,500 damages verdict at secondary strength, and a $500 penalty extinguished by repeal at Supreme Court strength.
Sources: Norris v. Crocker et al., 54 U.S. 429 (1851); Norris v. Newton et al., 5 McLean 92 (1850); Boone County Public Library, “Undiscovered” account, September 6, 2024 (the $2,500 figure, secondary strength); Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 (§4) and 1850 (penalty provisions). Read November 2026.