Chapter IX: Prosecutions of Underground Railroad Men

The aversion to a law for the rendition of fugitive slaves that early manifested itself in the North was perhaps foreshadowed in the hesitating manner in which the question was dealt with by Congress. The original demand for legislation was caused by the activity of kidnappers in Pennsylvania; but the first bill, reported from committee to the House in November, 1791, was dropped for some reason not now discoverable. At the end of March in the following year a committee of the Senate was appointed to consider the matter, but it accomplished nothing. At the beginning of the next session a second Senate committee was chosen, and from this body a bill emanated. This bill proved to be unsatisfactory, however, and after the committee had been remodelled by the addition of two new members the bill was recommitted with instructions to amend. With some slight change the measure proposed by the committee was adopted by the Senate, January 18; and after an interval of nearly three weeks the House passed it with little or no debate, by a vote of forty-eight to seven. Thus for nearly a year and a quarter the subject was under the consideration of Congress before it could be embodied in a bill and sent to the executive for his signature. On February 12, 1793, President Washington signed this bill and it became a law.[744]

[744] M. G. McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, pp. 17, 18.

The object of the law was, of course, to enforce the constitutional guarantee in regard to the delivery of fugitives from service to their masters. An analysis of the law will show that forcible seizure of the alleged fugitive was authorized; that the decision of the magistrate before whom he was to be taken was allowed to turn on the testimony of the master, or the affidavit of some magistrate in the state from which he came; and that trial by jury was denied. Persons attempting to obstruct the law by harboring or concealing a fugitive slave, resisting his arrest, or securing his rescue, were liable to a fine of five hundred dollars for the benefit of the claimant, and the right of action on account of these injuries was reserved to the claimant.[745]

[745] _Statutes at Large_, I, 302-305.

known as "attorney-general for fugitive slaves," on account of his frequent appearance as counsel in fugitive slave cases.]

who aided 2700 runaways, and paid $8000 in fines for his violations of the slave laws.]

The exclusive regard for the rights of the owner exhibited in these provisions was fitted to stir the popular sense of justice in the Northern states, most of which had already ranged themselves by individual action on the side of liberty. Persons moved by the appeals of the hunted negro to transgress the statute would naturally try to avoid its penalties by concealment of their acts, and this we know was what they did. The whole movement denominated the Underground Railroad was carried on in secret, because only thus could the fugitives, in whose behalf it originated, and their abettors, by whom it was maintained, be secure from the law. When through mischance or open resistance, as sometimes happened, an offender against the law was discovered and brought to trial, the case was not allowed to progress far before the Fugitive Recovery Act itself was assailed vigorously by the counsel for the defendant. The grounds of attack included the absence of provision for jury trial, the authority of the claimant or his agent to arrest without a warrant, the antagonism between state and federal legislation, the supposed repugnancy of the law of 1793 to the Ordinance of 1787, the denial of the power of Congress to legislate on the subject of fugitive slaves, and the question as to the responsibility for the execution of the law. Nearly if not all of these disputed points were involved in the great question as to the constitutionality of the congressional act, a question that kept working up through the successive decisions of the courts to irritate and disturb the peace between the sections, that the fugitive clause in the federal Constitution, the act of 1793 itself, and the judicial affirmations following in their train were intended to promote.

The omission of a provision from the law of Congress securing trial by jury to the alleged fugitive was at once remarked by the friends of the bondman, and caused the law to be denounced in the court-room as worthy only of the severest condemnation.[746] As early as 1819, in the case of Wright _vs._ Deacon, tried before the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, it was urged that the supposed fugitive was entitled to a jury trial, but the arguments made in support of the claim have not been preserved.[747] The question was presented in several subsequent cases of importance arising under the law of 1793, namely, Jack _vs._ Martin, in 1835,[748] Peter, _alias_ Lewis Martin, about 1837,[749] and State _vs._ Hoppess, in 1845.[750] From the reports of these cases one is not able to gather much in the way of direct statement showing what were the grounds taken for the advocacy of trial by jury in such cases, but the indications that appear are not to be mistaken. In all of these cases it seems to have been insisted that the law of 1793 failed to conform to the constitutional requirement on this point; and in State _vs._ Hoppess it is distinctly stated that the law provided for a trial of the most important right without a jury, contrary to the amendment of the Constitution declaring that "In suits at common law, where the value shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved...";[751] and that the act also authorized the deprivation of a person of his or her liberty contrary to another amendment, which declares that no person shall be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."[752] In Jack _vs._ Martin, as probably in the other cases, the obvious objection seems to have been made that the denial of the jury contributed to make easy the enslavement of free citizens. The courts, however, did not sustain these objections; thus, for example, in the last case named, Judge Nelson, while admitting the defect of the law, decided in conformity with it,[753] and the claims upon the constitutional guarantees, asserted in behalf of the supposed fugitive, were also overruled, a reason given in the case of Wright _vs._ Deacon being that the evident scope and tenor of both the Constitution and the act of Congress favored the delivery of the fugitive on a summary proceeding without the delay of a formal trial in a court of common law. Another reason offered by the court in this case, and repeated by the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York in the matter of Peter, _alias_ Lewis Martin, was that the examination under the federal slave law was only preliminary, its purpose being merely to determine the claimant's right to carry the fugitive back to the state whence he had fled, where the question of slavery would properly be open to inquiry.

[746] Professor Eugene Wambaugh, of the Law School of Harvard
University, in a letter to the author, comments as follows on
the source of the injustice wrought by the Fugitive Slave acts:
"The difficulty lay in the initial assumption that a human being
can be property. Grant this assumption, and there follow many
absurdities, among them the impossibility of framing a Fugitive
Slave Law that shall be both logical and humane. Human beings
are entitled to a trial of the normal sort, especially in a case
involving the liability of personal restraint. Chattels, however,
are entitled to no trial at all; and if a chattel be lost or
stolen, the owner may retake it wherever he finds it, provided he
commits no breach of the peace. (3 Blackstone's _Commentaries_,
4.) If slaves had been treated as ordinary chattels, there
could have been no trial as to the ownership of them, unless,
indeed, there were a dispute between competing claimants. There
would have been, however, the fatal objection that thus a free
man--black, mulatto, or white--might be enslaved without a
hearing. Here, then, is a puzzle. If the man is a slave, he
is entitled to no trial at all. If he is free, he is entitled
to a trial of the most careful sort, surrounded with all the
safeguards that have been thrown up by the law. When there is
such a dilemma, is it strange that there should be a compromise?
The Fugitive Slave Laws really were a compromise; for in so far
as they provided for an abnormal and incomplete trial, a hearing
before a United States Commissioner, simply to determine rights
as between the supposed slave and the supposed master, they
conceded the radical impossibility of following out logically
the supposition that human beings can be chattels, and, in so
far as they denied to the supposed slave the normal trial, they
assumed in advance that he was a slave. I need not write of the
dilemma further. A procedure intermediate between a formal trial
and a total denial of justice was probably the only solution
practicable in those days; but it was an illogical solution, and
the only logical solution was emancipation."

[747] 5 _Sergeant and Rawle's Reports_, 63. See Appendix B, p.
368.

[748] 14 _Wendell's Reports_, 514. See Appendix B, p. 368.

[749] In the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern
District of New York. 2 _Paine's Reports_, 352.

[750] 2 _Western Law Journal_, 282.

[751] Amendments, Article VII.

[752] _Ibid._, Article V.

[753] _12 Wendell's Reports_, 315-324.

The mode of arrest permitted by the law was a cause of irritation to the minds of abolitionists throughout the free states, and became one of the points concerning which they joined issue in the courts. The law empowered the claimant to seize the fugitive wheresoever found for the purpose of taking him before an officer to prove property. The circumstances that quickened the sympathy of a community into active resistance to this feature of the law are fully illustrated in one of the earliest cases coming before a high court, in which the question of seizure was brought up for determination. The case is that of Commonwealth vs. Griffith, which was tried in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, at the October term in 1823. From the record of the matter appearing in the law-books, one gathers that a slave, Randolph, who had fled from his master in Virginia, found a refuge in New Bedford about 1818, where by his thrift he acquired a dwelling-house. After several years he was discovered by Griffith, his owner's agent, and was seized without a warrant or other legal process, although the agent had taken the precaution to have a deputy sheriff present. The agent's intention was to take the slave before a magistrate for examination, pursuant to the act of 1793.[754] New Bedford was a Quaker town, and the slave seems not to have lacked friends, for the agent was at once indicted for assault and battery and false imprisonment. The action thus begun was prosecuted in the name of the state, under the direction of Mr. Norton, the attorney-general. As against the act of Congress the prosecution urged that the Constitution did not authorize a seizure without some legal process, and that such a seizure would manifestly be contrary to the article of the amendments of the Constitution that asserted the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.[755] The protest that if the law was constitutional any citizen's house might be invaded without a warrant under pretence that a negro was concealed there called forth the interesting remark from Chief Justice Parker that a case arising out of a constable's entering a citizen's house without warrant in search of a slave had come before him in Middlesex, and that he had held the act to be a trespass. Nevertheless, the court sustained the law on the ground that slaves were not parties to the Constitution, and that the amendment referred to had relation only to the parties.[756]

[754] _2 Pickering's Reports_, 12. See Appendix B, p. 368.

[755] Amendments, Article IV; 2 _Pickering's Reports_, 15, 16.

[756] 2 _Pickering's Reports_, 19.

The question of arrest without warrant emerged later in several other cases; for example, Johnson vs. Tompkins (1833),[757] the matter of Peter, _alias_ Lewis Martin (1837),[758] Prigg _vs._ Pennsylvania (1842),[759] and State _vs._ Hoppess (1845).[760] The line of objection followed by those opposing the law in this series will be sufficiently indicated by the arguments presented in the Massachusetts case of 1823, treated above. The tribunals before which the later suits were brought did not depart from the precedent set in the early case, and the act of 1793 was invariably justified. In Johnson _vs._ Tompkins the court pointed out that under the law the claimant was not only free to arrest his fugitive without a warrant, but that he was also free to do this unaccompanied by any civil officer, although, as was suggested, it was the part of prudence to have such an officer to keep the peace.[761] In the famous case of Prigg _vs._ Pennsylvania, the Supreme Court of the United States went back of the law of Congress to the Constitution in seeking the source of the master's right of recaption, and laid down the principle that "under and in virtue of the Constitution, the owner of a slave is clothed with entire authority, in every state in the Union, to seize and recapture his slave, whenever he can do it without any breach of the peace, or any illegal violence. In this sense and to this extent this clause of the Constitution may properly be said to execute itself, and to require no aid from legislation, state or national."[762]

[757] In the Circuit Court of the United States for the Eastern
District of Pennsylvania. 1 _Baldwin's Circuit Court Reports_, p.
571 et seq. See Appendix B, p. 368.

[758] 2 _Paine's Reports_, 350. See Appendix B, p. 369.

[759] 16 _Peters' Reports_, 613.

[760] 2 _Western Law Journal_, 282. See Appendix B, p. 371.

[761] 1 _Baldwin's Circuit Court Reports_, 571; Hurd, _Law of
Freedom and Bondage_, Vol. II, p. 444.

[762] 16 _Peters' Reports_, 613.

For many years before Prigg's case various states in the North had considered it to be within the province of their legislative powers to enact laws dealing with the subject of fugitive slaves. It would be beside our purpose to enter here upon an examination of these statutes, but it is proper to say that the variety of particulars in which these differed from the law concerning the same subject enacted by Congress prepared the way for a series of legal contests in regard to the question, whether the power to legislate in relation to fugitive slaves could be exercised properly by the states as well as by the federal government. This issue presented itself in at least three notable cases under the law of 1793: these were Jack _vs._ Martin (1835), Peter, _alias_ Lewis Martin (1837), and Prigg _vs._ Pennsylvania (1842). The decisions reached in the first and last cases are of especial significance, because, in the first, the question of concurrent jurisdiction constituted the subject of main interest for the Supreme Court of New York, the court to which the case had been taken from an inferior tribunal; while in the last case, the importance attaches to the conclusive character of an adjudication pronounced by the most exalted court of the nation.

In Jack _vs._ Martin the action was begun under the New York law of 1828 for the recovery of a fugitive from New Orleans. Notwithstanding the fact that this law authorized the seizure and return of fugitives to their owners, and that in the case before us, as occurred also in the case of Peter, _alias_ Lewis Martin, the negro was adjudged to his claimant, the law of the state was considered invalid, because the right of legislation on the subject was held to belong exclusively to the national government.[763]

[763] 12 _Wendell's Reports_, 311, 316-318.

In Prigg's case[764] a statute of Pennsylvania, passed in 1826, and bearing the suggestive title, "An act to give effect to the provisions of the Constitution of the United States relative to fugitives from labor, for the protection of free people of color, and to prevent kidnapping," was violated by Edward Prigg in seizing and removing a fugitive slave-woman and her children from York County, Pennsylvania, into Maryland, where their mistress lived. In the argument made before the Supreme Court in support of the state law, the authority of the state to legislate was urged on the ground that such authority was not prohibited to the states nor expressly granted "in terms" to Congress;[765] that the statute of Pennsylvania had been enacted at the instance of Maryland, and with a view to giving effect to the constitutional provision relative to fugitives;[766] that the states could best determine how the duty of delivery enjoined upon them should be performed so as to be made acceptable to their citizens;[767] and that the act of Congress was silent as to the rights of negroes wrongfully seized and of the states whose territory was entered and laws violated by persons acting under pretext of right.[768] The Supreme Court did not sustain these objections. A majority of the judges agreed with Justice Story in the view that Congress alone had the power to legislate on the subject of fugitive slaves. The reasons given for this view were two: first, the constitutional source of the authority, by virtue of which the force of an act of Congress pervades the whole Union uncontrolled by state sovereignty or state laws, and secures rights that otherwise would rest upon interstate comity and favor; and, secondly, the necessity of having a uniform system of regulations for all parts of the United States, by which the differences arising from the varieties of policy, local convenience and local feelings existing in the various states can be avoided. The right to retake fugitive slaves and the correlative duty to deliver them were to be "coextensive and uniform in remedy and operation throughout the whole Union." While maintaining that the right of legislation in this matter was exclusively vested in Congress, the court insisted that it did not thereby interfere with the police power of the several states, and that by virtue of this power the states had the authority to arrest and imprison runaway slaves, and to expel them from their borders, just as they might do with vagrants, provided that in exercising this jurisdiction the rights of owners to reclaim their slaves secured by the Constitution and the legislation of Congress were not impeded or destroyed.[769]

[764] See Appendix B, p. 370.

[765] 16 _Peters' Reports_, 579.

[766] _Ibid._, 588-590.

[767] _Ibid._, 595.

[768] _Ibid._, 602.

[769] _Ibid._, 612-617.

As the friends of runaway slaves sometimes sought to oppose to the summary procedure of the federal law the processes provided by state laws in behalf of fugitives, so in their endeavor to overthrow the act of 1793, they occasionally appealed to the Ordinance for the government of the Northwest Territory. The Ordinance, it will be remembered, contained a clause prohibiting slavery throughout the region northwest of the Ohio River, and another authorizing the surrender of slaves escaping into this territory.[770] The abolitionists took advantage of these provisions under certain circumstances, in the hope of securing the release of those that had fallen into the eager grasp of the congressional act, and at the same time of proving the incompatibility of this measure with the Ordinance. The attempt to do these things was made in three well-known cases, which came before the courts about 1845. The first of these was State _vs._ Hoppess, tried before the Supreme Court of Ohio on the circuit, to secure the liberation of a slave that had fled from his keeper, but was afterwards recaptured;[771] the second was Vaughan _vs._ Williams, adjudicated in the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Indiana, a case originating in an action against the defendant for rescuing certain fugitives;[772] and the third was Jones _vs._ Van Zandt, which was carried to the Supreme Court of the United States and there decided. This last case grew out of the aid given nine runaways by Mr. Van Zandt, through which one of them succeeded in escaping.[773] The arguments, based upon the Ordinance, that were advanced in these cases are adequately set forth in the report of the first case, a report prepared by Salmon P. Chase, subsequently Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. These arguments, two in number, were as follows: first, the Ordinance expressly prohibited slavery, and thereby effected the immediate emancipation of all slaves in the Territory; and, secondly, the clause in the Ordinance providing for the surrender of fugitives applied only to persons held to service in the _original_ states.[774]

[770] See Chap. II, pp. 28, 32.

[771] 2 _Western Law Journal_, 279-293.

[772] 3 _Western Law Journal_, 65-71; also, 3 _McLean's Reports_,
530-538.

[773] 5 _Howard's Reports_, 215 _et seq._

[774] 2 _Western Law Journal_, 281, 283; 3 _McLean_, 530.

The opinions given by the courts in the cases under consideration failed to support the idea of the irreconcilability existing between the law of 1793 and the Ordinance. The Supreme Court of Ohio declared that under the federal Constitution the right of recaption of fugitive slaves was secured to the new states to the same extent that it belonged to the original states.[775] The Circuit Court of the United States took virtually the same stand by pointing out that a state carved from the Northwest Territory assumed the same constitutional obligations by entering the Union that the original thirteen states had earlier assumed, and that where a conflict occurred the Constitution was paramount to the Ordinance.[776] Finally, the Supreme Court at Washington declared that the clause in the Ordinance prohibiting slavery applied only to people living within the borders of the Northwest Territory, and that it did not impair the rights of those living in states outside of this domain. Wheresoever the Ordinance existed the states preserved their own laws, as well as the Ordinance, by forbidding slavery; the provision of the Constitution and the act of Congress looking toward the delivery of fugitive slaves did not interfere with the laws of the free states as to their own subjects. The court therefore held that there was no repugnance between the act and the Ordinance.[777]

[775] 2 _Western Law Journal_, 288.

[776] 3 _McLean's Reports_, 532; 3 _Western Law Journal_, 65.

[777] 5 _Howard's Reports_, 230, 231.

Among the various objections raised in the court-room against the law of 1793, the denial of the power of Congress to legislate on the subject of fugitive slaves was one that should not be overlooked. It commanded the attention of the bench in at least two important cases, both of which have been mentioned in other connections, namely, Peter, _alias_ Lewis Martin (1837), and State _vs._ Hoppess (1845). In both of these cases the denial of legislative authority was based upon the doctrine that there had been no delegation of the necessary power to Congress by the Constitution. The fugitive slave clause in the Constitution, it was said in the report of the second case, prepared by Mr. Chase, granted no power at all to Congress, but was "a mere clause of compact imposing a duty on the states to be fulfilled, if at all, by state legislation."[778] However prevalent this view may have been in the Northern states,--and the number of state laws dealing with the subject of fugitive slaves indicates that it predominated,--neither the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York in the earlier case, nor the Supreme Court of Ohio in the later, were willing to subscribe to the doctrine. On the contrary, both asserted the power of Congress to pass laws for the restoration of runaway slaves, on the ground that the creation of a duty or a right by the Constitution is the warrant under which Congress necessarily acts in making the laws needful to enforce the duty or secure the right.[779]

[778] 2 _Paine's Reports_, 354; 2 _Western Law Journal_, 282.

[779] 2 _Paine's Reports_, 354, 355; also, 2 _Western Law
Journal_, 289.

The outcome of the judicial examination in the high courts of the various points thus far considered was wholly favorable to the constitutionality of the law of 1793. The one case within the category of great cases in which that law was decided to be unconstitutional in any particular was that of Prigg _vs._ Pennsylvania. By the law of 1793 state and local authorities were empowered to take cognizance of fugitive slave cases together with judges holding their appointments from the federal government.[780] In the hearing given the case before the Supreme Court at Washington, in 1842, Mr. Johnson, the attorney-general of Pennsylvania, cited former decisions of the Supreme Court to show that in so far as the congressional law vested jurisdiction in state officers it was unconstitutional and void.[781] The court's answer was momentous and far-reaching. While the law was declared to be constitutional in its essential features, it was asserted that it did not point out any state functionaries, or any state actions, to carry its provisions into effect. The states could not, therefore, so the court decided, be compelled to enforce them; and any insistence that the states were bound to provide means for the performance of the duties of the national government, nowhere delegated or entrusted to them by the Constitution, would bear the appearance of an unconstitutional exercise of the interpretative power.[782] As the decision in the Prigg case carried the weight of great authority, and became a precedent for all future judgments,[783] the relief it afforded state officers from distasteful functions was soon accepted by many states, and they enacted laws forbidding their magistrates to issue warrants for the arrest or removal of fugitive slaves.[784] In consequence of this manifest disinclination on the part of the Northern states to restore to Southern masters their escaped slaves, the federal government was induced to make more effective provision for the execution of the Constitution in this particular. Such provision was embodied in the second Fugitive Slave Law, passed as a part of the Compromise of 1850.

[780] See Section 3 of the act, _Statutes at Large_, I, 302-305.

[781] 16 _Peters' Reports_, 598.

[782] _16 Peters' Reports_, 608, 622. See also Marion G.
McDougall's _Fugitive Slaves_, pp. 108, 109.

[783] M. G. McDougall's _Fugitive Slaves_, p. 28.

[784] See Chap. IX, pp. 245, 246, and Chap. X, p. 337.

That the new law was not intended to extinguish the old is apparent from the title assigned it, which read: "An Act to amend, and supplementary to, the Act entitled 'An Act respecting Fugitives from Justice, and Persons escaping from the service of their Masters, ..."[785] Its evident purpose was to increase the facilities and improve the means for the recovery of fugitives from labor. To this end it created commissioners, who were to have authority, like the judges of the circuit and district courts of the United States, to issue warrants for the apprehension of runaway slaves, and to grant certificates for the removal of such persons back to the state or territory whence they had escaped. All cases were to be heard in a summary manner; the testimony of the alleged fugitive could not be received in evidence; and the fee of the commissioner or judge was to be ten dollars when the decision was in favor of the claimant, but only five dollars when it was unfavorable. The penalties created by the new law were more rigorous than those imposed by the old. A fine not to exceed a thousand dollars and imprisonment not to exceed six months constituted the punishment for harboring a runaway or aiding in his rescue, and the party injured could bring suit for civil damages against the offender in the sum of one thousand dollars for each fugitive lost through his interference. If the claimant apprehended a rescue, the officer making the arrest could be required to retain the fugitive in his custody for the purpose of removing him to the state whence he had fled. The refusal of the officer to obey and execute the warrants and precepts issued under the provisions of the law laid him liable to a fine of a thousand dollars for the benefit of the claimant; and the escape of a fugitive from his custody, whether with his assent or without it, made him liable to a prosecution for the full value of the labor of the negro thus lost. Ample security from such disaster was intended to be provided for the marshal and his deputies by the clause authorizing them to summon to their aid the bystanders, or posse comitatus, when necessary, and all good citizens were commanded to respond promptly with their assistance. In removing a fugitive back to the state from which he had escaped, when an attempt at rescue was feared, the marshal in charge was commanded to employ as many persons as he deemed necessary to resist the interference. The omission of the new law to mention any officers appointed by the states is doubtless traceable, as is the clause establishing commissionerships, to the ruling in the decision of Prigg's case that state officers could not be forced to execute federal legislation.

[785] _Statutes at Large_, IX, 462.

It will be remembered that the decision in the Prigg case also contained a ruling that acknowledged the right of the claimant to seize and remove the alleged fugitive, wheresoever found, without judicial process. It has been suggested recently that this part of the decision, denominated the most obnoxious part, was avoided in the law of 1850.[786] But the language of the new law no more denied this right than the language of the old bestowed it. In both cases equally the claimant seems to have enjoyed the right of private seizure and arrest without process, but for the purpose of taking the supposed fugitive before the proper official.[787] So far as the language of the statute was concerned the Prigg decision was quite as possible under the later as under the earlier law. It was the language of the Constitution upon which this part of the famous decision was made to rest, and that, it needs scarcely be said, continued unchanged during the period with which we are concerned.

[786] Henry W. Rogers, Editor, _Constitutional History of the
United States as seen in the Development of American Law_,
Lecture III, by George W. Biddle, p. 152.

[787] Section 3 of the law of 1793 provided that "the person to
whom such labour or service may be due, his agent or attorney,
is hereby empowered to seize and arrest such fugitive from
labour, and to take him or her before any judge of the circuit
or district courts of the United States, ... within the state,
or before any magistrate of a county (etc.) ... wherein such
seizure ... shall be made, and upon proof to the satisfaction of
such judge or magistrate ... it shall be the duty of such judge
or magistrate to give a certificate thereof ... which shall be
a sufficient warrant for removing the said fugitive ... to the
state or territory from which he or she fled."