John Van Zandt was an abolitionist who aided the Underground Railroad

Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad was an informal network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century black slaves in the United States to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. The term is also applied to the abolitionists,...

 resistance movement

Resistance movement

A resistance movement is a group or collection of individual groups, dedicated to opposing an invader in an occupied country or the government of a sovereign state. It may seek to achieve its objects through either the use of nonviolent resistance or the use of armed force...

 in Ohio after having been a slaveholder in Kentucky. Sued for monetary damages by a slaveholder whose escaped slaves he aided, he was a party to Jones v. Van Zandt (1847), a case by which abolitionists intended to challenge the constitutionality of slavery. The case was decided by the United States Supreme Court against Van Zandt; it upheld the right of Congress and the obligation of the government to protect slavery, as it was established under the Constitution. Van Zandt was ruined financially by the decision and died later that year.

Background

While living in Evendale, Ohio

Evendale, Ohio

Evendale is a village in Hamilton County, Ohio, United States. The population was 3,090 at the 2000 census.Evendale was the home of John Van Zandt, a participant in the Underground Railroad....

, Van Zandt often illegally harbored slaves in the basement of his house and helped them escape to the North. In the 1840s, he was caught. He was excommunicated from the Sharon

Sharonville, Ohio

Sharonville is a city in Butler and Hamilton counties in the U.S. state of Ohio. The population was 13,804 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Sharonville is located at .It is part of the Cincinnati metropolitan area....

 Methodist Episcopal Church

Methodist Episcopal Church

The Methodist Episcopal Church, sometimes referred to as the M.E. Church, was a development of the first expression of Methodism in the United States. It officially began at the Baltimore Christmas Conference in 1784, with Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke as the first bishops. Through a series of...

, which had already joined the Southern portion

Methodist Episcopal Church, South

The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, or Methodist Episcopal Church South, was the so-called "Southern Methodist Church" resulting from the split over the issue of slavery in the Methodist Episcopal Church which had been brewing over several years until it came out into the open at a conference...

 of the national congregations, although he was a trustee and had helped found it. They judged his anti-slavery activities to be "immoral and un-Christian conduct." Despite this, he continued to harbor slaves, but was caught again.

Van Zandt was charged for monetary damages by Wharton Jones, a slaveholder who lost his property, in what became known as Jones v. Van Zandt (1847), which was settled by the US Supreme Court. Abolitionists pressed the case to challenge the constitutionality of slavery. Despite being defended by Salmon P. Chase

Salmon P. Chase

Salmon Portland Chase was an American politician and jurist who served as U.S. Senator from Ohio and the 23rd Governor of Ohio; as U.S. Treasury Secretary under President Abraham Lincoln; and as the sixth Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.Chase was one of the most prominent members...

, future Secretary of Treasury for Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...

 and Chief Justice of the United States from 1864-1873, Van Zandt was ruled against by the court. In a decision by Chase's predecessor, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney

Roger B. Taney

Roger Brooke Taney was the fifth Chief Justice of the United States, holding that office from 1836 until his death in 1864. He was the first Roman Catholic to hold that office or sit on the Supreme Court of the United States. He was also the eleventh United States Attorney General. He is most...

, the court determined that slavery was protected by the Constitution, and the federal government had the right and obligation to support it; thus the 1793 Fugitive Slave Law was constitutional. States could determine whether slavery would be legal within their borders. Through years of challenging his legal case, Van Zandt lost all his land and property. He had to place his eleven children with relatives across the country. He died later in the year of the decision.

Aftermath

Hoping to settle the issue of slavery, Chief Justice Taney increased sectional tensions in the nation. In 1850 Southerners pushed through a new Fugitive Slave Act that required states to support enforcement and increased the penalties for those aiding escaped slaves. It also added to the tensions across the country.

Legacy and honors

On June 19, 2005, the Sharonville United Methodist Church

United Methodist Church

The United Methodist Church is a Methodist Christian denomination which is both mainline Protestant and evangelical. Founded in 1968 by the union of The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church, the UMC traces its roots back to the revival movement of John and Charles Wesley...

 (the pro-slavery Southern faction rejoined the mainline Methodist Church in the 20th century) attracted national press attention when it posthumously restored Van Zandt's membership. About a dozen Van Zandt descendants traveled to the city to accept a formal letter of apology by the church for the expulsion of their ancestor for his anti-slavery activities.

In popular culture

• Van Zandt was believe to have been the basis for the character of Van Trompe in Harriet Beecher Stowe
  Harriet Beecher Stowe
  Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author. Her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was a depiction of life for African-Americans under slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and United Kingdom...
  
  's bestselling Uncle Tom's Cabin
  Uncle Tom's Cabin
  Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman....
  
  (1850), which helped rouse anti-slavery activists.