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The famous Lemon slave case...
The famous Lemon slave case...
Item # 716773
November 15, 1852
DAILY NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER, Washington, D.C., Nov. 15, 1852
* Lemmon v. New York
* Slaves - freedom lawsuit
* Virginia slave owners
* Pre-American Civil War
Nearly half of page 2 is taken up with much detail on the: "Judgement In The New York Slave Case".
This was the famous case popularly known as the Lemmon Slave Case, a freedom suit initiated in 1852 by a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The petition was granted by the Superior Court in New York City, a decision upheld by the New York Court of Appeals, New York's highest court, in 1860 on the eve of the Civil War.
The decision mandated the release of eight slaves, including six children, brought into New York by their Virginia slave owners, Jonathan and Juliet Lemmon, who were in transit while relocating to Texas. New York had abolished slavery gradually beginning in 1799, freeing all remaining slaves on July 4, 1827. An 1841 state law explicitly prohibited slaveholders from bringing slaves in transit to the state, liberating any slaves so brought.
There is much on the internet concerning the Lemmon Slave Case.
Four pages, clean archival mends at the mid-fold and in the margins, nice condition. There is much on the internet concerning the Lemmon Slave Case.
background: The Lemmon Slave Case of 1852 was a pivotal legal battle that challenged the limits of slavery's reach into free states and became a powerful prelude to the Civil War. When Jonathan and Juliet Lemmon, slaveholders from Virginia, brought eight enslaved individuals into New York while en route to Texas, the state's 1841 law prohibiting the importation of slaves—even temporarily—was invoked by abolitionist Louis Napoleon, who filed a writ of habeas corpus. New York courts ultimately ruled that the enslaved individuals were free the moment they entered the state, rejecting arguments that such transit was protected under federal interstate commerce or property rights. The New York Court of Appeals upheld this decision in 1860, emphasizing the state’s sovereign right to prohibit slavery within its borders and directly contradicting the U.S. Supreme Court’s pro-slavery stance in Dred Scott v. Sandford. Though Virginia sought to appeal to the Supreme Court, the onset of the Civil War halted further proceedings. The case galvanized abolitionist sentiment, underscored the legal power of individual and state resistance to slavery, and was even cited by South Carolina in its declaration of secession, marking it as a significant legal and political flashpoint in the nation’s path to emancipation.
Category: Pre-Civil War
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