Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

For the slave act of 1793, see Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

Long title	An Act to amend, and supplementary to, the Act entitled "An Act respecting Fugitives from Justice, and Persons escaping from the Service of their Masters," approved February twelfth, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three.
Enacted by	the 31st United States Congress
Citations
Statutes at Large	9 Stat. 462
Legislative history
Signed into law by President Millard Fillmore on September 18, 1850
Major amendments
Repealed by Act of June 28, 1864, 13 Stat. 200

An April 24, 1851 poster warning the "colored people of Boston" about policemen acting as slave catchers.

The Fugitive Slave Act or Fugitive Slave Law was passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave-holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers.

The Act was one of the most controversial elements of the 1850 compromise and heightened Northern fears of a "slave power conspiracy". It required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be returned to their masters and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate. Abolitionists nicknamed it the "Bloodhound Law", for the dogs that were used to track down runaway slaves.

Background

By 1843, several hundred slaves a year were successfully escaping to the North, making slavery an unstable institution in the border states.

The earlier Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was a Federal law which was written with the intent to enforce Article 4, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution, which required the return of runaway slaves. It sought to force the authorities in free states to return fugitive slaves to their masters.

Many Northern states wanted to disregard the Fugitive Slave Act. Some jurisdictions passed "personal liberty laws", mandating a jury trial before alleged fugitive slaves could be moved; others forbade the use of local jails or the assistance of state officials in the arrest or return of alleged fugitive slaves. In some cases, juries refused to convict individuals who had been indicted under the Federal law.

The Missouri Supreme Court routinely held with the laws of neighboring free states, that slaves who had been voluntarily transported by their owners into free states, with the intent of the masters' residing there permanently or indefinitely, gained their freedom as a result. The Fugitive Slave Law dealt with slaves who escaped to free states without their master's consent. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842), that states did not have to offer aid in the hunting or recapture of slaves, greatly weakening the law of 1793.

After 1840, the black population of rural Cass County, Michigan, grew rapidly as families were attracted by white defiance of discriminatory laws, by numerous highly supportive Quakers, and by low-priced land. Free and runaway blacks found Cass County a haven. Their good fortune attracted the attention of southern slaveholders. In 1847 and 1849, planters from Bourbon and Boone counties in northern Kentucky led raids into Cass County to recapture runaway slaves. The raids failed but the situation contributed to Southern demands in 1850 for passage of the strengthened Fugitive Slave Act.

Southern politicians often exaggerated the number of escaped slaves and often blamed escapes on Northerners interfering with Southern property rights. Since there was no way to confirm the number of runaway slaves, Congress enacted stricter laws regarding fugitive slaves in the United States.

New law

Print by E. W. Clay, an artist who published many proslavery cartoons, supports the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. In the cartoon, a Southerner mocks a Northerner who claims his goods, several bolts of fabric, have been stolen. "They are fugitives from you, are they?" asks the slaveholder. Adopting the rhetoric of abolitionists, he continues, "As to the law of the land, I have a higher law of my own, and possession is nine points in the law."

In response to the weakening of the original fugitive slave act, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 penalized officials who did not arrest an alleged runaway slave, and made them liable to a fine of $1,000 (about $28,000 in present-day value). Law-enforcement officials everywhere were required to arrest people suspected of being a runaway slave on as little as a claimant's sworn testimony of ownership. The suspected slave could not ask for a jury trial or testify on his or her own behalf. In addition, any person aiding a runaway slave by providing food or shelter was subject to six months' imprisonment and a $1,000 fine. Officers who captured a fugitive slave were entitled to a bonus or promotion for their work.

Slave owners needed only to supply an affidavit to a Federal marshal to capture an escaped slave. Since a suspected slave was not eligible for a trial, the law resulted in the kidnapping and conscription of free blacks into slavery, as suspected fugitive slaves had no rights in court and could not defend themselves against accusations.

The Act adversely affected the prospects of slave escape, particularly in states close to the North. One study finds that while slave prices rose across the South in the years after 1850 it appears that "the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act increased prices in border states by 15% to 30% more than in states further south", illustrating how the Act altered the chance of successful escape.

Nullification

In 1855, the Wisconsin Supreme Court became the only state high court to declare the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional, as a result of a case involving fugitive slave Joshua Glover and Sherman Booth, who led efforts that thwarted Glover's recapture. In 1859 in Ableman v. Booth, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the state court.

In November 1850, the Vermont legislature passed the "Habeas Corpus Law," requiring Vermont judicial and law enforcement officials to assist captured fugitive slaves. It also established a state judicial process, parallel to the federal process, for people accused of being fugitive slaves. This law rendered the federal Fugitive Slave Act effectively unenforceable in Vermont and caused a storm of controversy nationally. It was considered a "nullification" of federal law, a concept popular in the South among states that wanted to nullify other aspects of federal law, and was part of highly charged debates over slavery. Noted poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier had called for such laws, and the Whittier controversy heightened angry pro-slavery reactions to the Vermont law. Virginia governor John B. Floyd warned that nullification could push the South toward secession, while President Millard Fillmore threatened to use the army to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act in Vermont. No test events took place in Vermont, but the rhetoric of this flare-up echoed South Carolina's 1832 nullification crisis and Thomas Jefferson's 1798 Kentucky Resolutions.

"Jury nullification" occurred as local Northern juries acquitted men accused of violating the law. Secretary of State Daniel Webster was a key supporter of the law as expressed in his famous "Seventh of March" speech. He wanted high-profile convictions. The jury nullifications ruined his presidential aspirations and his last-ditch efforts to find a compromise between North and South. Webster led the prosecution against men accused of rescuing Shadrach Minkins in 1851 from Boston officials who intended to return Minkins to his owner; the juries convicted none of the men. Webster sought to enforce a law that was extremely unpopular in the North, and his Whig Party passed him over again when they chose a presidential nominee in 1852.

Resistance in the North and other effects

The Fugitive Slave Law brought the issue home to anti-slavery citizens in the North, as it made them and their institutions responsible for enforcing slavery. "Where before many in the North had little or no opinions or feelings on slavery, this law seemed to demand their direct assent to the practice of human bondage, and it galvanized Northern sentiments against slavery." Moderate abolitionists were faced with the immediate choice of defying what they believed to be an unjust law, or breaking with their own consciences and beliefs. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) to highlight the evils of slavery.

Many abolitionists openly defied the law. Reverend Luther Lee, pastor of the Wesleyan Methodist Church of Syracuse, New York, wrote in 1855:

I never would obey it. I had assisted thirty slaves to escape to Canada during the last month. If the authorities wanted anything of me, my residence was at 39 Onondaga Street. I would admit that and they could take me and lock me up in the Penitentiary on the hill; but if they did such a foolish thing as that I had friends enough on Onondaga County to level it to the ground before the next morning.

There were several instances of northern communities putting words like these to action. Several years before, in the Jerry Rescue, Syracuse abolitionists freed by force a fugitive slave who was to be sent back to the South and successfully smuggled him to Canada. Thomas Sims and Anthony Burns were both examples of a unsuccessful attempts by opponents of the Fugitive Slave Law to use force to free a captured slave. Other famous examples include Shadrach Minkins in 1851 and Lucy Bagby in 1861, whose forcible return in 1861 has been cited by historians as important and "allegorical." Pittsburgh abolitionists organized groups whose purpose was the seizure and release of any slave passing through the city, as in the case of a free black servant of the Slaymaker family, erroneously "rescued" by black waiters in a hotel dining room. If fugitive slaves were captured and put on trial, abolitionists worked to defend them in trial, and if by chance the recaptured slave had his or her freedom put up for a price, abolitionists worked to purchase it.

Other opponents, such as African-American leader Harriet Tubman, simply treated the law as just another complication in their activities. One important consequence was that Canada became a major destination for escaped slaves. The black population of Canada increased from 40,000 to 60,000 between 1850 and 1860, and many reached freedom by the Underground Railroad. Notable black publishers such as Henry Bibb and Mary Ann Shadd created publications encouraging migration to Canada. By 1855, an estimated 3,500 people among Canada's black population were fugitive slaves. In Pittsburgh, for example, during the September following the passage of the law, organized "squads" of escaped slaves, armed and sworn to "die rather than be taken back into slavery," set out for Canada, with more than 200 men leaving by the end of the month. The black population in New York City dropped by almost 2,000 from 1850 to 1855.

On the other hand, a large amount of business owners in the northern states supported the law due to their business ties to the southern states. They founded the Union Safety Committee and raised thousands of dollars to promote their cause, which gained sway particularly in New York City and caused public opinion to shift in support of the law.

End of the Act

In the early stages of the American Civil War, the Union had no established policy on escaping slaves. A large number of slaves escaped from plantations to Union lines, but in the early stages of the war, runaway slaves were often returned by Union forces to their slaves. General Benjamin Butler and some other Union generals, however, refused to return runaway slaves under the law because the Union and the Confederacy were at war. He confiscated the slaves as contraband of war and set them free, figuring that the loss of workers would also damage the Confederacy. Lincoln allowed Butler to continue his policy, but countermanded broader directives issued by other Union commanders that freed all slaves in places under their control.

In August 1861, the U.S. Congress enacted the Confiscation Act, which barred slaveholders from re-enslaving captured runaways. The legislation, sponsored by Lyman Trumbull, was passed on a near-unanimous vote and established military emancipation as official Union policy, but applied only to slaves used by rebel owners to support the Confederate cause. Union Army forces sometimes returned runaway slaves to masters until March 1862, when Congress enacted legislation barring Union forces from returning any runaway slaves. James Mitchell Ashley proposed legislation to repeal the Fugitive Slave Act, but the bill did not make it out of committee in 1863. Although the Union policy of confiscation and military emancipation had effectively superseded the operation of the Fugitive Slave Act, the Fugitive Slave Act was formally repealed in June 1864. The New York Tribune hailed the repeal, writing: "The blood-red stain that has blotted the statute-book of the Republic is wiped out forever."

See also

• Fugitive slave laws
• Prigg v. Pennsylvania
• Ableman v. Booth
• Fugitive Slave Law Convention of 1850, Cazenovia, New York
• Underground Railroad
• Emancipation Proclamation
• Slave Trade Acts

Incidents involving fugitive slaves:

• Passmore Williamson
• William Still
• Christiana incident (or riot), 1851
• Joshua Glover
• Jerry Rescue

Sources

• "Fugitive Slave Law" (2008)
• ISBN 978-0020354413

Further reading

• Basinger, Scott J. "Regulating slavery: Deck-stacking and credible commitment in the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850". Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 19.2 (2003): 307-342.
• Campbell, Stanley W. The Slave Catchers: Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, 1850–1860 (U North Carolina Press, 2012).
• Hummel, Jeffrey Rogers, and Barry R. Weingast. "The fugitive slave act of 1850: Symbolic gesture or rational guarantee." (2006). online
• Landon, Fred. "The Negro migration to Canada after the passing of the fugitive slave act." Journal of Negro History 5.1 (1920): 22-36. online
• Smith, David G. On the Edge of Freedom: The Fugitive Slave Issue in South Central Pennsylvania, 1820-1870 (Fordham Univ Press, 2013).
• Snodgrass, M. E. The Underground Railroad Set: An Encyclopedia of People, Places, and Operations. (M. E. Sharpe, 2008).
• Walker, Christopher David. "The fugitive slave law, antislavery and the emergence of the republican party in Indiana." (PhD, Purdue, 2013). online

External links

• Complete text of the Fugitive Slave Law
• Compromise of 1850 and related resources at the Library of Congress
• "Slavery in Massachusetts" by Henry David Thoreau
• Runaway Slaves a Primary Source Adventure featuring fugitive slave advertisements from the 1850s, hosted by The Portal to Texas History
• Serialized version of Uncle Tom's Cabin in The National Era by the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center