James Somerset

This case happened a few years prior to the United States being officially founded, and it was actually an English case, but its outcome would determine how a nation on the verge of becoming its own would navigate the thorny question of fugitive slaves.

In 1769, James Somerset, an enslaved person from what would become the United States, was brought to England by his enslaver, Charles Stuart, a man who had been a customs official while he was in Boston, but who was now moving back to Britain.

In 1771, while still in England, Somerset ran away from Stuart, only to be recaptured about two months later.

Stuart then had Somerset imprisoned on a ship bound for Jamaica to be sold into bondage on one of the plantations there.