In obedience to this supreme law Chief-Justice Shaw refused to the
captive the writ of _habeas corpus_, and Judge Story granted the owner
possession of the fugitive, and time to procure evidence of his
ownership. But worse still Massachusetts officials and one of her jails
were employed to aid in the return of a man to slavery. This degradation
aroused the greatest indignation in the State and led to the enactment
of a law prohibiting its officials from taking part in the return of
fugitive slaves, and the use of its jails and prisons for their
detention. The passage of this personal liberty measure served to
increase the activity of the anti-Union working forces in the South.
Then, again, the serious difficulty between Massachusetts and two of the
slave States in regard to their treatment of her colored seamen aided
Garrison in his agitation for the dissolution of the Union by the keen
sense of insult and injury which the trouble begat and left upon the
popular mind. Colored men in Massachusetts enjoyed a fair degree of
equality before her laws, were endowed with the right to vote, and were,
barring the prejudice against color, treated by the commonwealth as
citizens. They were employed in the merchant service of her interstate
trade. But at two of the Southern ports where her vessels entered, the
colored seamen were seized by the local police and confined in houses of
detention until the vessels to which they belonged were ready to depart,
when they were released and allowed to join the vessels.
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