They weren't called Know-Nothings f''r nuthin'

During the 19th Century, a potato blight struck Ireland. The semi-feudal, agricultural economy collapsed. Millions of unwashed, ignorant, drunken, wife-beating Irish streamed into our country. A political party emerged, determined to keep them out - a bunch of flag-waving xenophobes calling themselves the "American" party. The "business of America is business" party, the Whigs, promptly christened them the "Know-Nothings." The epithet stuck - and for good reason.

Capitalism calls for the free flow of all factors of production. Labor is a key factor of production. The more a country obstructs the free flow of all factors of production - including labor - the less capitalistic that society becomes. The Know-Nothings, faced with a choice between xenophobia and economic efficiency, chose xenophobia.

Today's Know-Nothings are making the same ignorant choice. The anti-immigration demogogues assert that home-grown Americans will gladly do the work done today by Mexicans. This assertion disputes the practical everyday experience of restaurant and hotel proprietors, fruit and vegetable growers, textile manufacturers, domestic service providers, building contractors, etc. One South Carolina peach grower reports that - even though he pays well above the minimum wage - he has never seen a home-grown American last a full day picking fruit. If the Know-Nothings get their way, a whole lot of produce will rot next harvest.

(Don't get me wrong! I'd love to see my white trash neighbor put in just one day of honest labor. But you'd have to pay another guy to stand over him with a whip.)

During the mid-19th Century, the industrial workers of the Northeast faced more than cheap Irish competition. A stream of illegal immigrants from the South - fugitive slaves - flowed across the Ohio River. All political parties - Whig, Democrat, Know-Nothings, etc. - united in opposition to this flow of desperate people seeking a better life. Only a tiny minority of abolitionists - mostly devout Christians instructed by their Bible to "welcome the stranger" - defied the Fugitive Slave Act.

In the courts of antebellum America, most dark-skinned people were the object of property law, torts and such. Theoretically, in the Free States, concepts of Equity applied. Occasionally, the law groped in the dark between the pragmatic expediencies of the one and the universal principles of the other. One such case came to trial in Coles County, Illinois in 1847.

"General" Robert Matson, a Kentucky farmer, bought Black Grove, a farm in Coles County, in 1843. Each Spring, he brought some slaves north from his Kentucky property to work Black Grove. After harvest, these slaves returned to Kentucky - except for Anthony Bryant, who stayed behind as a sort of manager/caretaker. Some uppity notions must have crossed his mind during the quiet Winter months. He may have wondered whether residence in a Free State made him free?

In 1847, Anthony Bryant was joined by his wife, Jane, and her four children. (One of more of these children may have been sired by "the General.") Matson's common law wife, Mary Corbin, resented Jane. Mary's stays at Black Grove were sheer hell for the Bryants. By August, they had had enough and fled to the hamlet of Oakland. The local innkeeper, Gideon M. Ashmore, an abolitionist, put them up - defying Illinois' Black Laws. The local Justice of the Peace issued a writ ordering Ashmore to produce the Bryants, who were then carted off to the county jail in Charleston. A hearing followed. Slave men and abolitionists prepared to take action, no matter what the verdict. In this violent atmosphere, the Justice of the Peace became persuaded that he lacked jurisdiction. The Bryant family was bound over to the Sheriff , where they could be sold under the Black Laws, to pay their jail fees of $107.30. To prevent this miscarriage of justice, Ashmore sued out a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of the Bryant family. Matson, meanwhile, sued Ashmore (and Dr. Rutherford, another abolitionist) for enticing his slaves, damages totaling $2500.

In October, the habeas corpus proceedings and the suit for damages were joined and placed on the docket of the Coles County Circuit Court. "General" Matson retained the services of a fine attorney from Springfield, whose antecedents traced back to the Commonwealth. He was a lanky, homely fellow named Abraham Lincoln.

Mr. Lincoln argued torts, torts, torts. He demonstrated that his client owned the Bryants and the slaves were "in transitu" - never permanently settled in Illinois. Judge William Wilson, of the Illinois Supreme Court, pressed Mr. Lincoln, trying to clarify the standing of the case in Equity: "Mr. Lincoln... if this case was being tried or issue joined in a habeas corpus, and it appeared there, as it does here, that this slave owner had brought this mother and her children, voluntarily, from the State of Kentucky, and settled them down on the farm in this State, do you think, as a matter of law, that they did not thereby become free?" Mr. Lincoln, presented with a hypothetical based on Equity, replied honestly: "No, Sir. I am not prepared to deny that they did." The "General" was not pleased.

During the trial, Mr. Constable, representing the Bryants (too lazy to look up Mr. Lincoln's 1841 argument defending a runaway in Bailey v. Cromwell), quoted Curran's famous defense of Rowan: "I speak in the spirit of the British law, which makes liberty commensurate and inseparable from British soil; which proclaims even to the stranger and sojourner the moment he steps upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy and consecrated by the genius of universal emancipation, no matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced; no matter what complexion incompatible with freedom in Indian or African sun burned upon him, no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down; no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery; the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain the altar and the gods sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of his chains that burst from round him and he stands regenerated and disenthralled by the genius of universal emancipation."

Mr. Lincoln's associate, Mr. Ficklin, observed the homely man wince.

The flood of illegal immigrants are drawn to our sacred soil. They aspire to a better life. A body of law blind to Equity deems them criminals. Is that the spirit of American law?