Newport Fugitive Slave Rescue: A Town Defied the Law
Near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
In July of eighteen forty-one, three enslaved men named Alick, Tom, and Ben fled their Maryland enslaver and were pursued north to Newport, Pennsylvania by bounty hunters. Ben drowned in the Juniata River during the chase. The other two were captured.
But several Newport residents intervened, aiding the men's escape from their captors. The federal government prosecuted those citizens, and in eighteen forty-two, six of them were fined in federal court for obstructing the return of fugitives. The episode was one of thousands of such confrontations tearing at the seams of a nation still living under compromises about slavery, and it fed directly into the debates that produced the far harsher Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty, which made it a federal crime to aid any person escaping bondage.
The people of Newport paid a price for choosing conscience over law.
