Already in 1833, David Lee Child had pinpointed the hypocrisy of traveling slaveowners who expected northerners to honor their property rights in slaves but refused to take seriously the freedom and self-ownership of northern Black people sojourning in southern states. In a move that became increasingly widespread and important in coming years, Whitmarsh and Caldwell turned to the Constitution’s Article IV to connect the rights of free Black sailors in the slave states with the rights of slaveowners in the free ones.
