Question

what was the significance of Personal Liberty Laws in histroy

Answer 1

Personal-liberty laws, pre-Civil War legislation enacted by Northern state legislatures in U.S. history to combat the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Acts and protect fugitive slaves and free settled blacks in the North.

In reaction to the Fugitive Slave Act contained in the 1850 Compromise, most northern states issued additional jury trial provisions, allowed serious punishment for unlawful capture and perjury of suspected fugitives, and forbade state authorities to recognize fugitive claims. Such provisions were among the other attacks on the rights of states cited by South Carolina in 1860 as a reason for the secession.

Laws on personal liberties have not always been so contentious. They 'd predated the United States. Constitution and had been a crucial part of the early republic's fugitive slave reclamation. As sectional tensions rose leading into the Civil War, they became contentious. Through time, they too have changed. In fact, it is helpful to think of the laws on personal freedom as falling within four distinct cycles. From 1780 to around 1820, the anti-kidnapping laws and the habeas corpus system worked both to protect free blacks in their freedom and to control the reclamation of runaway slaves. Several free states enacted more stringent personal liberty laws from 1820 through 1842 that governed the process of fugitive slave removal.

In 1842, the decision of the Supreme Court in Prigg v. Pennsylvania ruled that the rules on personal rights of states were unconstitutional and that federal legislation (embodied in the fugitive slave acts of 1793 and later in 1850) should regulate solely the deportation of runaway slaves. Some states during this period passed the first specifically called "personal liberty rules" that removed state assistance from the deportation of fugitive slaves. However, beginning in 1855, several states passed new laws on personal freedom that ignored the Supreme Court and federal law, and expanded state protection to suspected escaped slaves.