Judge George Manierre, I

Among those who assisted escaped slaves fleeing north was Judge George Manierre, I, Chicago pioneer Manierre, I, 1817 - 1863.

George Manierre, I, was an active abolitionist. He was a founder of the Chicago Anti-Slavery Society on January 16, 1840, and as the organization’s treasurer, George Manierre was among its first officers. (It is likely to have been chartered as a branch of the American Anti-Slavery Society.) The society petitioned the state legislature "to remove from the Illinois statutes those laws collectively known as the 'Black Code' which prevented negroes from testifying against whites, and which permitted any white man to cause any black man to be thrown in jail who did not show his papers of freedom" (1884, Andreas, History of Chicago, p. 608. December 25, 1840, Chicago American). The Anti-Slavery Society was formed partly to differentiate itself from the Chicago Colonization Society, a group formed four months earlier, whose goal was to send African-Americans back to Africa.

George Manierre II wrote that “Between 1846 and 1854 it was quite common for runaway slaves to pass through Chicago on their way to Canada. I remember my father taking a suit of his clothes and dressing a runaway slave in the rear kitchen of our house on [the southwest corner of] Michigan avenue and Jackson boulevard" (George Manierre, II, 1845-1924, The Manierre family in early Chicago history. Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Springfield, 1915. 4° v. 8, p 451).

In early June of 1851 Chicago lawyers George Manierre and Edwin C. Larned, defended Moses Johnson, the first African American arrested in Illinois under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, a federal law intended to ensure the return of enslaved persons who had fled their owners in the South. The two argued before a United States Commissioner that “this man did not answer to the description of the man claimed” (Samuel May, The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims, published by the American Anti-Slavery Society, 1861, p. 17). The claimant was Crawford E. Smith, of Missouri. The defense was successful, and Mr. Johnson was set free. In gratitude, the African-American community of Chicago presented each of Mr. Johnson’s defenders with a silver cup. Within a decade, when Southern states passed ordinances of secession from the Union, among the grievances they cited was the Northern states’ failure to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act.