Fugitive Slave Law of 1850

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

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

A significant source of conflict between Southern slave states and Northern free states was the lack of assistance given by Northerners to Southern slave-owners and their agents, who were seeking to recapture escaped slaves. Many Southerners viewed this as support for abolitionism, and resented Northern officials' refusal to respect Southern states' rights. In contrast, most Northern states had abolished slavery within their borders, and many Northern officials did not want their local institutions to be used to support the enforcement of Southern states' slavery laws. They viewed efforts to compel such assistance as an infringement of Northern states' rights.

1 Background
2 New law
- 2.1 Effects
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

Background

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was a Federal law which enforced a section of the United States Constitution that required the return of runaway slaves. It sought to force the authorities in free states to return fugitive slaves to their masters. In practice, however, the law was rarely enforced. Some Northern states passed "personal liberty laws", mandating a jury trial before alleged fugitive slaves could be moved. Otherwise, they feared free blacks (who could vote in ten of the thirteen states at the time of the adoption of the Constitution) could be kidnapped into slavery. Other states forbade the use of local jails or the assistance of state officials in the arrest or return of such fugitives. In some cases, juries simply refused to convict individuals who had been indicted under the Federal law. Moreover, locals in some areas actively fought attempts to seize fugitives and return them to the South. The Missouri State Supreme Court routinely held that transportation of slaves into free states automatically made them free. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842), that states did not have to proffer aid in the hunting or recapture of slaves, greatly weakening the law of 1793.

New law

In the response to the weakening of the original fugitive slave act, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 made any Federal marshal or other official who did not arrest an alleged runaway slave liable to a fine of $1,000. Law-enforcement officials everywhere now had a duty to arrest anyone suspected of being a runaway slave on no more evidence than 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 fee for their work.

Effects

In fact the Fugitive Slave Law brought the issue home to anti-slavery citizens in the North, since it made them and their institutions responsible for enforcing slavery. Even moderate abolitionists were now faced with the immediate choice of defying what they believed an unjust law or breaking with their own consciences and beliefs. The case of Anthony Burns fell under this statute.

Many Methodists were highly active in the abolition movement, though the Methodist Episcopal Church was officially reluctant to touch the issue because it did not want to fan the flames of inter-sectional hatreds after the Southern wing split off in 1844. Two splinter groups of Methodism, the Wesleyan Church in 1843 and the Free Methodists in 1860, along with many like-minded Quakers, maintained some of the "stations" of the Underground Railroad. Most of the stations were maintained by African Americans.

The Fugitive Slave Act brought a defiant response from abolitionists. 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 any thing 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.

Other opponents such as African American leader Harriet Tubman simply treated the law as just another complication in their activities. The most important reaction was making the neighboring country of Canada the main destination of choice for runaway slaves. Only a few hundred runaways made it to Canada in the 1850s.

With the outbreak of the American Civil War, General Benjamin Butler justified refusing to return runaway slaves in accordance to this law because the Union and the Confederacy were at war, the slaves could be confiscated and set free as contraband of war.