"THE MOST IMPORTANT COURT VICTORY FOR THE ANTISLAVERY MOVEMENT OF THE 1830S": FIRST EDITION OF THE LANDMARK REPORT… IN THE CASE OF COMMONWEALTH VS. AVES, 1836, FEATURING THE DECISION OF MASSACHUSETTS CHIEF JUSTICE LEMUEL SHAW, WHICH THE U.S. SUPREME COURT COUNTERED IN DRED SCOTT V. SANFORD, 1857

(CONSTITUTION) (SHAW, Lemuel) . Case of the Slave-Child, Med. Report of the Arguments of Counsel, And of the Opinion of the Court, In the Case of Commonwealth vs. Aves; Tried and Determined in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. Boston: Isaac Knapp, 1836. Slim octavo, original self-wrappers, original stitching; pp. (1-3) 4-40. $3500.

First edition of the substantive 1836 Report of the Massachusetts "Case of the Slave-Child… Commonweath vs. Aves," with the complete "arguments for counsels for both sides… and the complete opinion of Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw" in a decisive and "powerful antislavery precedent" to be countered nearly two decades later by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1857 Dred Scott case, in original self-wrappers.

The groundbreaking Massachusetts Supreme Court case, Commonwealth v. Aves, "was the most important court victory for the antislavery movement of the 1830s and became a major precedent for Northern opponents of slavery" (Finkelman in Abolition and Antislavery, 85). The 1836 case, which involved an enslaved girl brought into Massachusetts by her slave-owner's wife, came before Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw, with Benjamin Curtis and his cousin Charles P. Curtis arguing the rights of the slave owner, and Ellis Gray Loring, Samuel E. Sewell and Rufus Choate arguing the child's right to freedom in Massachusetts, where slavery was illegal. Report of the Arguments, the first substantial record of Commonwealth v. Aves, contains "the initial petition for the writ of habeas corpus, the returns made in response to the writ, the arguments of counsel for both sides… and the complete opinion of Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw. The arguments made by Benjamin Curtis and Ellis Gray Loring contain some of the most sophisticated and thorough examinations of the problem presented by a union of slave and free states that were made in the antebellum period… Curtis essentially argued that by comity Massachusetts ought to… enforce the laws of Louisiana that made Med a slave. Loring responded that slavery could not exist by positive law, and… could not be enforced or supported through interstate comity" (Finkelman, Slavery, 29).

The Aves case was especially "because of the stranglehold of the Constitution" (Delbanco, War Before the War, 176-77). In Chief Justice Shaw's lengthy opinion (35-40), he "discussed numerous British and American cases on slavery… after examining various precedents, including the British case of Somerset v. Stewart (1772), Shaw concluded that Med became free the moment her owner voluntarily brought her into the state" (Finkelman in Abolition, 85-87). His decision "was the first by an American court to apply the implications of Somerset to interstate transit and sojourn of slaves" (Finkelman, Slavery, 26), and it "proved to be a powerful antislavery precedent… By the eve of the Civil War every Northern state except Indiana, Illinois and New Jersey offered immediate freedom to any slave brought within its jurisdiction… [while] most Southern states no longer accepted the principles of Aves and Somerset. Thus, in Mississippi and Missouri courts rejected longstanding precedents and ruled that slaves did not become free if brought to free states. The Supreme Court affirmed their right to do this in Strader v. Graham (1851) and Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857)" (Finkelman in Abolition, 85-87). With passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, "for the first time in the nation's history, the federal government would assume responsibility for recovering fugitive slaves, and anyone who interfered would be committing a federal crime… From one point of view, it was a defensible armistice… from another point of view, it was… the most corrupt bargain in American history" (Delbanco, 226, 261).

As scholar Paul Finkelman notes, there are several memorable ironies linked to the case. Both Shaw and the winning attorney Choate were opposed to abolitionist activism, with Shaw voting against Lincoln in 1860, and Choate later representing slave owners in fugitive slave cases. The losing attorney Benjamin Curtis, who was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1851 and had a long pro-slavery record, nevertheless "became something of a hero in the North after 1857 because of his vigorous dissent in the Dred Scott case" (Finkelman, Slavery 27). Sabin 2490. Evans 35849. Library Company, Afro-Americana 739.

Expert restoration to text, primarily to wormholing along lower margin of final 8 leaves, affecting text but not readability of last 5 leaves.