But, by asserting federal government authority and responsibility over the area of fugitive slave return, it set the stage for future more stringent laws that would bypass individual state decisions about slavery.
"[6] On March 29, 1788, the State of Pennsylvania passed an amendment to one of its laws (An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, originally enacted March 1, 1780): "No negro or mulatto slave... shall be removed out of this state, with the design and intention that the place of abode or residence of such slave or servant shall be thereby altered or changed."
On March 26, 1826, the State of Pennsylvania passed a further law: If any person or persons shall, from and after the passing of this act, by force and violence, take and carry away, or cause to be taken or carried away, and shall, by fraud or false pretense, seduce, or cause to be seduced, or shall attempt so to take, carry away or seduce, any negro or mulatto, from any part or parts of this commonwealth, to any other place or places whatsoever, out of this commonwealth, with a design and intention of selling and disposing of, or of causing to be sold, or of keeping and detaining, or of causing to be kept and detained, such negro or mulatto, as a slave or servant for life, or for any term whatsoever, every such person or persons, his or their aiders or abettors, shall on conviction thereof, in any court of this commonwealth having competent jurisdiction, be deemed guilty of a felony.
[8] After his death, Ashmore's heirs eventually decided to claim her as a slave and hired slavecatcher Edward Prigg to recover her.
Prigg pleaded not guilty and argued that he had been duly appointed by Ashmore heirs to arrest and return Morgan to their estate in Maryland.
The question was whether Pennsylvania law violated the constitutional guarantee of fugitive slave return and the 1793 Act of Congress, passed to implement it.
Such an emphatic refusal to uphold the Fugitive Slave Act was viewed in the Southern states as a brazen violation of the federal compact.
A constituent complained by letter to South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun that the new personal liberty laws "rendered slave property utterly insecure" and constituted a "flagrant violation of the spirit of the U.S.
[11][full citation needed] Increasing sectional tension over slavery resulted in the Compromise of 1850, which covered several issues related to the status of territories acquired in the Mexican–American War.
[12] However, the Liberty Party platform of 1843 (which was adopted in advance of the 1844 presidential election) condemned the Prigg v. Pennsylvania decision and said that the ruling nullified habeas corpus protection for free blacks and took away their "whole legal security of personal freedom.