An enjoyable and at times heart-wrenching story of law versus people, Fugitive
Justice is thus a must-read for anyone interested in slavery and the origins of the
Civil War. It also raises important questions of a wider nature: what should the
relationship be between the Constitution, the law, and the people ? How much
flexibility should judges have in sentencing ? Is it legitimate to break the written law,
or even to kill, in the name of a ‘‘ higher’’ law ? John Brown concluded that it was,
and in 1864, in the middle of the bloody war that followed decades of tension, the
Fugitive Slave Act was finally repealed.