The Story of the Runaway Slave That Helped End the Fugitive Slave Act

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Speaker 1: And we continue with Our American Stories. Here again to tell another great story is the Jack Miller Center’s editorial officer and historian, Elliott Drago. The Jack Miller Center is a trusted partner of Our American Stories, and is a nationwide network of scholars and teachers dedicated to educating the next generation about America’s founding principles and history. Take it away, Elliott.

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Speaker 2: In the heart of Philadelphia, a runaway mother desperately held her infant son close as she matched wits with a ruthless slave catcher. The mother, born Betsy Galloway, escaped from her enslavement in Maryland in 1845 with the help of a free man named William Thompson. Galloway soon married Thompson, changed her name to Catherine Thompson, and eventually settled in Burlington County, New Jersey, where she gave birth to a son, Joel, in 1847. The Thompson family lived in relative safety in New Jersey, though the thought of her prior enslavement must have haunted her, for black Americans across the North often fell prey to determined enslavers, ruthless kidnappers, and unflinching slave catchers. Catherine Thompson was far from safe. Two years later, a black man named James Frisbee Price appeared at the Thompsons’ doorstep, claiming that he was a lost hunter. Taking pity on the man, the Thompsons welcomed him into their home and made fast friends with Price. A few weeks later, Catherine Thompson received an invitation from Price to visit him and his wife in Philadelphia, but when she arrived at the Price household, she realized Price’s ruse and found herself face to face with the notorious slave catcher, the Philadelphian George Alberti, Jr. Black Americans like Catherine Thompson faced a precarious freedom living in the Antebellum North. Despite its history of abolitionism, the forces of slavery still lurked across the state of Pennsylvania. Labeled as “the most northern of southern cities” by one historian, Philadelphia hosted street battles over slavery throughout the 19th century. These battles took many forms, from fugitive slave rescues and the kidnapping of free black Americans to vicious riots that led to the wanton destruction of Black Philadelphia. The tension stemmed from the 1793 Federal Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed enslavers and slave catchers to pursue fugitives from slavery across state lines. Compounding this issue, states like Pennsylvania passed legislation that not only promoted freedom, but also sought to protect free blacks against kidnappers masquerading as “legal slaveholders.” Ordinary black and white abolitionists protected black Americans by practicing what I call street diplomacy, the up-close contests over freedom and slavery at the local level in Philadelphia that influenced politics and politicians at the state and national levels. The kidnappings of free blacks, as well as fugitive slave retrievals, led street diplomats to pressure Pennsylvania lawmakers to pass liberty laws, which were pieces of state legislation designed to protect black Americans. Not only did these laws reflect the intertwined realities of blacks fleeing Southern slavery and the kidnapping of free blacks throughout the North, but these laws also revealed how some Americans strove to live up to the promises enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. While most of these cases began on the streets of Philadelphia, all of them involved high-profile politicians, from governors to members of Congress to Supreme Court Justices. These struggles in Pennsylvania brought to light the illusory nature of borders between the free and the slave states, as well as the inherent tension over freedom and slavery that eventually led to the Civil War, to the chagrin of slaveholders. By 1850, a slew of Northern states followed Pennsylvania’s lead and enacted their own liberty laws. Southerners believed that they possessed the right to track and capture black Americans throughout the Union, and viewed Northern states’ liberty laws as a threat to maintaining peaceful relationships within the Union. The rise of aggressive abolitionism and the national celebrity of black Americans like Frederick Douglass, as well as the ongoing public successes of the Underground Railroad, further exacerbated slaveholders’ patience. Southern enslavers and some of their northern colleagues believed that only federal legislation could solve the fugitive slave crisis, protect slave-state interests, and save the Union. The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act fully immersed the federal government in the process of retrieving fugitives from slavery. This federal slave-catching policy overrode northern state officials bound by either personal conviction or state law to refuse to become involved in fugitive slave cases. Furthermore, slaveholders’ testimonies would be valid while the accused could not testify at all. If the court ruled in favor of the enslaver, they then had the power to request that U.S. Marshals hire as many people as necessary to bring the enslaved person back South. Most importantly, anyone who interfered with the arrest of an accused fugitive faced a fine of $1,000 and up to six months in jail. In short, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act made all Americans, whether Northern or Southern, white, black, male or female, responsible for assisting slaveholders in their pursuit of fugitives from slavery. Returning to Catherine Thompson’s case, here we witness how she acted as a street diplomat in a high-stakes game of life and death. Slapping handcuffs on her, Alberti demanded that she leave Joel with the Prices in Philadelphia and that she come with him back to slavery in Maryland. Catherine Thompson bravely refused Alberti’s request and clung tightly to her child. As a mother, she would not surrender her son. Yet, as a street diplomat, she also knew that Alberti would be charged as a kidnapper under Pennsylvania law if he brought them both back to Maryland, for Joel was indeed born free in New Jersey. Although a slave catcher posing as an abolitionist tried to convince her otherwise, and even after enduring a savage beating from Alberti, Thompson would not let go of her child. Alberti relented and agreed to bring Joel to Maryland too, but not to avoid separating a mother from her child. Instead, Alberti adopted the heartless, logical, and legal realities created by slaveholders and their pro-slavery allies, namely that the condition of slavery followed the mother. Since Joel was the product of a runaway slave, Alberti reasoned that both he and his mother could be legally kidnapped and re-enslaved down South, and that’s exactly what he did. Alberti brought them back to Maryland, where Thompson’s former enslaver sold them further South, never to be heard from again. But that is not the end of the story. Black and white street diplomats, many of whom acted as agents and conductors of the Underground Railroad, convinced Pennsylvania officials to press charges against Alberti and Price for kidnapping Joel, but not his mother. You might ask, why weren’t they charged for kidnapping Catherine Thompson? Here’s the tragic answer. Catherine Thompson was a runaway, and therefore the slave catchers were within their legal rights to bring her back to her enslaver. After a lengthy, gripping trial, the jury found Alberti and Price guilty of kidnapping Joel and sentenced them to prison at the infamous Eastern State Penitentiary. In a cruel twist of fate, the newly elected Democratic Governor William Bigler of Pennsylvania pardoned the pair the next year, and both Alberti and Price returned to plying their grim trade on the streets of Philadelphia. The case of Catherine Thompson and her infant son, Joel, was one in a plethora of similar events that exploded across the North prior to the Civil War. Confronted by such cases, white Americans soon began to chafe over the inhumanity of slavery and the inhumanity of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which charged all Americans with aiding in the return of runaways. This aid meant ripping families apart, inflicting violence on the innocent, and condemning their fellow Americans to perpetual servitude, each human being lost to slavery. The efforts of black and white abolitionists to expose the true nature of aiding the forces of slavery in all of its gut-wrenching intricacies, eventually bore fruit. In time, Americans increasingly rejected being beholden to slaveholders who hoped to spread slavery and not freedom, across the nation. Northerners elected a president in 1860 who refused to accept the expansion of slavery as the true mission of the United States. The Civil War reflected the culmination of history and diplomacy. The efforts of black and white Americans who worked together to destroy slavery and bring about a more perfect union.

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Speaker 1: A terrific job on the editing, production, and storytelling by our own Greg Hangler. And a special thanks to Elliott Drago, who’s the Jack Miller Center’s editorial officer and historian. The story of Catherine Thompson, here on Our American Stories.