Legal Practice and Pragmatics in the Law: The 1821 Trials of John Reed, "Fugitive Slave"

Abstract

John Reed, a person of color, had come to Pennsylvania from Maryland, representing himself as a free man, some two or three years before the events that led to his being tried for two murders. To the reporters who publicized his case in the Chester County Village Record, “It appeared sufficiently clear” that Reed was the child of the slave Maria, who had been a queen in her native Africa.1 Between twenty-seven and thirty years old in 1820, married, and with one child, he lived in Kennett Township, where he worked odd jobs in the neighborhood.2 Reed’s life in Chester County was marked by anxiety; he rarely went unarmed and frequently expressed his fear of kidnappers who, he claimed, had previously tried to enslave him. As his neighbors would soon discover, his fears were not unwarranted. Samuel Griffith, a slave owner from Maryland, claimed ownership of Reed and considered him a runaway. Reed, it was later discovered, could not demonstrate his free status, as he could show “no proof of manumission.”3 On the night of December 14, 1820, Griffi th, supported by a posse of three—his overseer, Peter Shipley, and two men identifi ed as Miner and Pearson—attempted to seize Reed from his Kennett Township home in the dark of night. Griffith and Shipley were fatally wounded in the attack, succumbing shortly afterward.

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