Some southern states, especially South Carolina, regularly threatened to secede from the Union if the national government interfered with their practice of slavery. The threat of disunion was so serious that many Americans who disliked slavery were willing to tolerate it. “Great as the evil of slavery is,” one of the Founding Fathers had said, “a dismemberment of the Union would be worse.” Judge Story agreed with this view. In decisions like Prigg v. Pennsylvania, he ruled that states—even states that had internally abolished slavery—had a legal obligation to return fugitives back into
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