Fugitive Slave Act

11 Key excerpts on "Fugitive Slave Act"

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  American Civil War

  The Essential Reference Guide

  • James R. Arnold, Roberta Wiener, James R. Arnold, Roberta Wiener(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • ABC-CLIO

    (Publisher)

  225 Fugitive Slave Acts (1793, 1850) Passed on February 12, 1793, and signed into law by President George Washington, the Fu- gitive Slave Act implemented Article IV, Sec- tion 2 of the Constitution, which prohibited states from freeing persons “held to Service or Labor” and required states to return fugi- tive slaves to the state from which they had fled. The Fugitive Slave Act made it a fed- eral offense to assist escapees and permitted the seizure of escaped slaves—as well as any children subsequently born to them—in any state of the union for as long as they lived. The act also specifically recognized the role of agents—known as slave-catchers—in secur- ing escaped slaves, and it authorized judges and magistrates to approve the transfer of slaves. However, northern states passed laws that made the Fugitive Slave Act more dif- ficult to enforce. As part of the Compromise of 1850, Congress strengthened the Fugitive Slave Act. The new act imposed harsh penal- ties for assisting or failing to return runaway slaves, at the same time stripping free blacks of any legal right to challenge the claims of An 1847 poster advertises a reward of $200 for the apprehension and return of five runaway slaves. Although slavery was illegal in several Northern states, government officials in the free states were required by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 to aid in the capture of runaway slaves and return them to their previous masters. (Library of Congress) 226 | Fugitive Slave Acts slave owners. Under the Fugitive Slave Acts, free blacks were frequently forced into slavery. Abolitionists, now legally required to assist slave owners, defiantly supported the Under- ground Railroad, organized to help slaves es- cape to Canada, where they were safe from American laws. Fugitive Slave Act (1793) An act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters.

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  Student's Guide to Landmark Congressional Laws on Civil Rights

  • Marcus D. Pohlmann, Linda Vallar Whisenhunt(Authors)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Greenwood

    (Publisher)

  The act authorized fines and imprisonment for any person hindering the arrest of a fugitive slave or assisting in the escape of a fugitive slave. Finally, the act contained provisions for the com- pensation of marshals and others involved in the return of fugitive slaves. A fourth act of the Compromise of 1850 declared slave trade illegal in the District of Columbia. No slave could be bought or sold in the district. Violation of the act resulted in freedom for the slave. 8. Compromise of 1850 ADMISSION OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA An Act for the Admission of the State of California into the Union. Be it enacted . . . That the State of California shall be one, and is hereby declared to be one, of the United States of America, and admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever. . . . APPROVED, September 9, 1850. ESTABLISHING THE UTAH TERRITORY An Act to Establish a Territorial Government for Utah. Be it enacted . . . That all that part of the territory of the United States included within the following limits . . . is hereby, created into a temporary government, by the name of the Territory of Utah; and, when admitted as a State, the said Territory, or any portion of the same, shall be received into the Union, with or without slavery, as their constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission . . . APPROVED, September 9, 1850. AMENDING THE Fugitive Slave Act An Act to amend, and supplementary to, the Act entitled "An Act respect- ing Fugitives from Justice, and Persons escaping from the Service of their Masters," approved February twelfth, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three. Be it enacted . . . That the persons who have been . . . appointed

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  William Still

  The Underground Railroad and the Angel at Philadelphia

  • William C. Kashatus(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • University of Notre Dame Press

    (Publisher)

  FOUR The Fugitive Slave Act

  The Vigilant Committee of Philadelphia ceased operations at the very time freedom seekers needed it most. To placate slaveholders who complained about the increasing number of escapes, Congress, in 1850, passed a stronger fugitive slave law than the earlier 1793 act.1 The infamous measure placed the freedom of every northern black in jeopardy. Slave catchers became ruthless in their quest. The kidnapping of free blacks increased dramatically. Some blacks armed themselves, intending to fight to the death for their freedom.

  “The new law strips us of all manner of protection,” editorialized the Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison’s antislavery newspaper. “It throws us back upon the natural and inalienable right of self-defense.”2 By November, fugitives who had fled to Pennsylvania as well as the free black population of the state were “arming themselves with pistols, bowie knives and rifles to prevent kidnapping.”3 Other blacks sought protection elsewhere. Within three months of the bill’s passage, an estimated three thousand fugitive slaves crossed the US border into Canada.4 “It is hardly too much to say that Pennsylvania is considered wholly unsafe to nine-tenths of her colored population,” wrote William Still. “They believe it far better to head for Canada than to remain here.”5

  The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 brought political tensions between the North and the South to a boiling point. At issue was the future of the United States, specifically whether it would become a modern country with an industrial economy based on free labor or remain dependent on an agricultural economy fueled by slave labor. The conflict had been building since the beginning of the nineteenth century as the nation expanded westward. With the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803, the federal government acquired some 828,000 square miles, almost doubling the geographical size of the country. In time, thirteen new states would be carved out of the new territory, and the admission of these states to the Union would stir bitter debates in Congress over the expansion of slavery. The first test came in 1819 when Missouri applied for statehood.

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  "Liberty to the Downtrodden"

  Thomas L. Kane, Romantic Reformer

  • Matthew J. Grow(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Yale University Press

    (Publisher)

  Passed as the final piece of the Compromise of 1850, the law ironically ensured that the great compromise would only aggravate the crisis 114 Fugitive Slaves over slavery. The very nature of the legislation virtually guaranteed continued disputes. Northern critics charged that the structure of the law favored the re-turn of alleged fugitives, as it denied them a jury trial, the right to a writ of habeas corpus, and the right to testify on their own behalf. Instead, a federal judge or a court-appointed commissioner would render verdicts on whether to return a fugitive. Furthermore, a commissioner could demand that any northerner participate in a fugitive-hunting posse. Northerners who aided a fugitive slave faced stiff penalties, imprisonment for up to six months, and a fine of up to one thousand dollars. Finally, a commissioner received ten dollars if he returned the fugitive to slavery and five dollars if he freed the alleged slave. While supporters of the legislation cited the need for extra paperwork in cases of extradition, oppo-nents viewed the extra five dollars as a transparent bribe.² Throughout the 1850s, one fugitive slave case after another gripped the coun-try, continual irritants in the nation’s festering sectional wounds. The contro-versy indicates the crucial role the border regions of the South played in the battles over slavery. Many southerners feared the weakening of slavery in the border South, as upper South masters sold their slaves to the lower South in large numbers in the decades leading up to the Civil War, a process historians have called the Second Middle Passage. Even more dangerous in the eyes of proslavery advocates was the constant stream of fugitives from the upper South into states immediately across the Mason-Dixon line, making Pennsylvania one of the key areas of dispute. By fleeing the South, fugitives not only sought per-sonal liberty, but also placed the issue of slavery squarely on the nation’s agenda.

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  The Great Stain

  Witnessing American Slavery

  • Noel Rae(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Abrams Press

    (Publisher)

  For the first few years, Harriet’s destination was New York State, where she had established a home for her parents and relatives after helping them escape. But then, as part of the Compromise of 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, which greatly strengthened the hand of the slave-catchers. Under the earlier law, passed in 1793, owners could retrieve slaves who had escaped to a free state by having them arrested, usually by slave-catchers, and brought before a local magistrate; by affidavit or in person, the master would then assert his ownership and ask the court to restore his property. But from the owners’ viewpoint this law was inadequate: it was they who had to bear the trouble and expense of recapturing the runaways. Also, “personal liberty laws” passed by many states made the hearings less arbitrary and often required trial by jury, with the consequent risk of coming before justices or jurors with abolitionist sympathies. So, in 1850, Congress decided that it would be “desirable for the peace, concord and harmony of the Union of these States, to settle and adjust amicably all existing questions of controversy between them arising out of the institution of slavery upon a fair, equitable and just basis.” To achieve these desirable ends, resolutions were passed admitting California as a free state to the Union, settling the boundaries of Texas and New Mexico, and discontinuing the slave trade (but not slavery itself) in the District of Columbia. Congress also resolved to make “more effectual provision … for the restitution and delivery of persons bound to service or labor in any State who may escape into any other State or Territory in the Union.”

  In essence, the Fugitive Slave Act forced everyone in the free states to assist in the arrest and return of runaways. Officials executing warrants of arrest were authorized to “summon and call to their aid the bystanders, or posse comitatus

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  Congress and the Crisis of the 1850s

  • Paul Finkelman, Donald R. Kennon(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Ohio University Press

    (Publisher)

  84 . 31 Weekly Raleigh Register and Carolina Gazette, Aug. 28 , 1850 . The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 131 ing peace and quiet in the country and maintaining inviolate the integrity of the Union.” 32 While Fillmore’s words had lofty aspirations, they did not account for the impact disgruntled northern antislavery groups would have in the months and years that followed. The absence of so many northern congressmen during the vote for the fugitive slave law pointed to concerns these men knew im -portant constituents had with the legislation. The growing crescendo of voices opposed to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 certainly would not embrace the even tougher legislation embodied in the 1850 statute. Those opposed to slavery did not support it and very quickly they began raising objections to the law. Several points were particularly irksome in the new legislation: no trial by jury for accused fugitives; no hearing before a judge for the fugitive; a federal commissioner served that role and the commissioner received higher compensation for a guilty verdict; marshals were subject to a W ne if they did not arrest an accused fugitive and they could demand aid from will -ing and unwilling bystanders; and aiding a fugitive could result in a heavy W ne, imprisonment, and civil suits. 33 Many people found these regulations very harsh and completely in opposition to rights guaranteed in the Consti -tution. Accused individuals at times were established, responsible, respected residents of the community, and their seemingly arbitrary seizure angered many people. 34 Antislavery forces o V ered a clear statement of their feelings about the bill while it still was under discussion in the Senate. During August 1850 the Cazenovia Slave Law Convention took place in Cazenovia, New York. More than two thousand people attended the conference, including at least thirty fugitives. Frederick Douglass served as president of the meeting.

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  The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom

  A comprehensive history

  • Wilbur Henry Siebert(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  [835] The bill was referred to a committee, where it was kept for some time, and at length was reported adversely in February, 1863.

  In the meantime slavery was subjected to a series of destructive attacks in Congress, despite the views of some, who held that the institution was under constitutional protection. The passions and exigencies of the War, together with the humane motives from which the anti-slavery movement had sprung, did not leave these assaults without justification. In August, 1861, a law was enacted providing for the emancipation of negroes employed in military service against the government; in April, 1862, slavery was abolished in the District of Columbia; in May, army officers were forbidden to restore fugitives to their owners; in June slavery was prohibited in the territories; and in July an act was passed granting freedom to fugitives from disloyal masters that could find refuge with the Union forces.

  In the train of these measures, and in September of the same year in which most of them were enacted, President Lincoln issued his proclamation of warning to the South declaring that all persons held as slaves in the states continuing in rebellion on the 1st of January, 1863, should be "thenceforth and forever free." When the warning was carried into effect on the first day of the new year by the famous Proclamation of Emancipation, ownership of slave property in the border states was not abolished. The loyalty of these states was their protection against interference. As the Fugitive Slave Law was not yet repealed opportunity was still afforded to civil officers to enforce its provisions both north and south of Mason and Dixon's line. North of the line there was, however, no disposition to enforce the law. South of it wandering negroes were sometimes arrested by the civil authorities for the purpose of being returned to their masters. The following advertisement, printed two months and a half after the final proclamation went into effect, illustrates the method pursued in dealing with supposed fugitives:—

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  Border War

  Fighting over Slavery before the Civil War

  • Stanley Harrold(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • The University of North Carolina Press

    (Publisher)

  If the judge or commissioner accepted the evidence, he could issue a certificate of removal that no other legal process would override. Anyone who interfered with either the capture or return of an alleged slave faced fines and imprisonment up to six months. As the bill progressed through the U.S. Senate during the spring and summer of 1850, southerners, supported by some northern Democrats, defeated efforts to require jury trials for, or allow writs of habeas corpus on behalf of, the accused. On August 19, Mason maintained—based on “the experience of the people of those States from whence these fugitives escape”—such provisions would defeat the purpose of the new law. 12 Conflict along the North-South border fortified Border South determination to defeat northern modifications of the bill. As discussed in chapter 6, nearly simultaneous, high-profile slave escapes transpired in Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Virginia. These events left little doubt among the region’s leaders that an escape crisis required federal action. The Lexington Observer stressed the importance citizens of “the border States of Kentucky, Virginia, and Maryland” placed on employing “U.S. appointees” to aid masters. Therefore, when on September 16 Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and President Fillmore signed it into law two days later, most white border southerners responded with enthusiasm. Congressman Thomas H. Bayly of Virginia claimed the new law would stop the outflow of “young and most valuable” slaves. The Missouri Republican portrayed the law as a means of helping those who had lost slaves and suffered difficulties in recaption. The only dispute concerned how much force might be necessary to achieve the desired result

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  Justice Accused

  • Mark D. Steinberg, Vladimir M. Khrustalev(Authors)
  • 1987(Publication Date)
  • Yale University Press

    (Publisher)

  On the legislative front, many of the abolitionists 9 goals depended on a broad reading of the authority of the national government: abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, elimination of slavery from the territories, the suppression 762 #i!/i5 ( Roles, and Rebels: Nature's Place Disputed of first the international and then the domestic slave trade, ultimately even the elimination of slavery from the states. But such goals sel-dom manifested themselves in lawsuits, while the fugitive rendition process was the single leading courtroom crucible for abolitionists after 1835. The Fugitive Slave clause of the federal Constitution provided: No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due. 12 The Act of 1793 provided for enforcement of this clause by way of summary process before any federal judge or state magistrate.* Proof of the material elements of identity and of escape from an obligation of service could be made either orally or by affidavit. In form and substance the fugitive rendition requirement was a limitation on state power. It deprived the state of plenary legislative competence to de-termine the status of its residents. However, the Act of 1793 was quite vague and left unclear the extent of state power to supplement the skeletal processes of the act with its own procedural or substan-tive safeguards. Antislavery lawyers argued for the broadest possible view of state power. They sought a state forum with jury trial; a right of confrontation; a right to present evidence. They sought to compel the slave-catcher to use peaceable process and to refrain from forcible recaption as constitutionally authorized self-help. 13 None of these ob-jectives were explicitly precluded by the clause or by its implement-ing legislation. Achievement of these objectives would be facilitated by a strong states rights approach to the Constitution. The argument was simple. The plenary

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  Seward's Law

  Country Lawyering, Relational Rights, and Slavery

  • Peter Charles Hoffer(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Cornell University Press

    (Publisher)

  41

  Finally, Seward complained that the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 criminalized what was a civil dispute. With the rendition of fugitives from justice, a matter of criminal law, Seward had no complaint, but as slavery rested on contract, a civil matter, and slaves, as property, were not committing a felony by seeking their freedom then by analogy no one assisting them should be treated as criminals. The law analogized the runaway as a fugitive from justice, when in fact, according to Southern slave law, he was no more than missing property. Slaves were not criminals for running away from a contract. Fugitive debtors, for example, were not considered felons. Story’s opinion for the Court in Prigg upholding the constitutionality of the act mistakenly conflated the two kinds of flight, a mistake, and not the only one that Story made. He thought that the point of the statute was to return the slave to the master, whereas as written, the statute said nothing about returning the slave; instead, it punished all who aided and abetted the runaway. Although the members of the constitutional convention knew all about slavery, they carefully excluded the word from the document. Claimants to labor, rather than master, appeared in the clause, hence in the law. It became “an engine for oppression and slavery” as Southern representatives gained control of Congress. If the Court did not stop the trend, all labor would become slavery, and all free state laws bow to the laws of the slave states. If the Constitution were the work of “we the people” such a construction of the clause and the act had to be erroneous.42

  Even here, Seward was not arguing from the standpoint of the natural rights of the slave. It was Van Zandt—his client and the defendant—whose rights he sought to preserve. For the same reason, Seward was not equating good law with morality. He did not argue that the opposite of rights was wrongs. Instead, rights derive from relations. Both men’s rights lay in obligations they owed one another. These rights were relational. Van Zandt’s relation to Andrew, embedded in the concept of hospitality, was so basic that it need not have been mentioned in the positive law. Due process was a pale illumination of relational rights as fundamental as hospitality. But due process demanded the obedience of all courts of law. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 violated due process not because it denied rights or dignity, or freedom to the alleged runaway, but because it denied rights to the free person who treated a runaway as a fellow human being.43

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  Slavery and the Founders

  Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson

  • Paul Finkelman(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  54

  Because the records of Congress for this period are scant, it is impossible to reconstruct fully the debates. It is clear, however, that the fugitive slave law did not sail smoothly through Congress. The debates in the Senate were particularly bitter. The deletion of virtually all of Senate Bill 1 and many of the provisions of Senate Bills 2 and 3 indicates the divisions within the Senate. The report in the Journal of the Senate that “progress” was made on January 14 and 16 suggests that progress had been slow up to that point.

  The last-minute effort in the Senate to lower the penalty for those who aided fugitive slaves also suggests the sectional aspects of the debate. Some northern senators were obviously unhappy with a law that might financially destroy their ethically motivated constituents: in 1793, $500 was a substantial sum of money. This northern opposition indicates that even in the 1790s opposition to slavery had some force. The defeat of this amendment, combined with other changes in the law favorable to the South, similarly suggests that the southern senators were far more unified in debate than their northern counterparts. The southerners, although outnumbered in the Senate, were able to mold the 1793 act to protect their interests. This was similar to what southern politicians had successfully accomplished at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and also in the first Congress.

  The attempt by Congressman Moore to increase the penalties for those who helped fugitive slaves escape suggests that some southerners doubted the bill would be effective in preventing northerners from aiding fugitive slaves. But the failure of his motion should not be seen as a defeat of southern interests. More likely, it indicated that most members of the House, including those from the South, did not want to prolong debate over a bill that, in one form or another, had been under consideration for over a year. A full debate of Moore’s amendment might have undermined the whole bill. Most southerners in the House must have realized that a $500 penalty was high enough, especially since the bill preserved a suit at common law for any other costs or losses associated with someone interfering with the rendition process. This included a suit for the full value of any slaves actually lost.

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