FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT OF 1850

The roots of the American Civil War (1861–1865) were complex, but the conflict-ridden issue of slavery is rightly given prominence by most scholars. At its base, the Civil War pitted fundamentally different regional and socio-economic forces against each other. Although agriculture had dominated the economy of the early American republic, its importance varied by region. Farming defined the economy of the South, which evolved into an agricultural aristocracy based on slavery. The states of New England, however, were shaped by very different natural forces. Deprived of fertile soil, society in New England developed an energetic mercantile culture in sharp contrast with the lifestyle of the South. The Northern region gave birth to influential merchant and business classes, whose wealth had little or no connection to the land. Although the middle colonies enjoyed a more mixed economy, they were inevitably influenced by the great trading and business centers of New York and Philadelphia.

Understandably, both the Northern and Southern cultures viewed its rival as a significant, if not mortal, threat to its way of life. As the first half of the nineteenth century drew to a close, many Southerners tightly embraced safeguards to their way of life as they felt increasingly threatened by the dynamic and often turbulent urban culture of the North. One such safeguard was the cluster of constitutional and legal provisions that mandated the return of runaway slaves to their legal owners.

As part of the sectional compromise that ensured the ratification of the Constitution, Article IV, section 2 of the document directed that "no person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any laws 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." Congress subsequently enacted the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 to specify procedures to aid in the recovery of runaway slaves.

Although slaveholders possessed formal legal remedies to recover runaway slaves, these measures, including the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, were routinely scorned in the North, where anti-slavery sentiment was generally strong. Ironically, Southern slaveholders, who routinely invoked the doctrine of states' rights to help protect the institution of slavery, were often frustrated in the recovery of runaway slaves by personal liberty laws enacted by the legislatures of several northern states. In one variant, personal liberty laws forbade state officials from participation in efforts to return fugitive slaves.

The question of runaway slaves was again placed before Congress in the famous Compromise of 1850. The compromise attempted to solve growing North-South tensions over the extension of slavery, specifically into newly annexed Texas and the territory gained by the United States in the Mexican War (1850–1853). The compromise measures originated largely from Stephen A. Douglas (1813–1861) and were sponsored in the Senate by Henry Clay (1777–1852). The compromise called for the admission of California as a free state, the use of popular sovereignty to decide free or slave status for New Mexico and Utah, the prohibition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and the passage of a stricter fugitive slave law. The prospects for the acceptance of these proposals were reinforced by the powerful speeches of statesman Daniel Webster (1782–1852), and the presidency of Millard Fillmore (1850–1853), a supporter of the compromise who stepped into office after the death of President Zachary Taylor (1784–1850). The proposals were passed as separate bills in September 1850.

The Fugitive Slave Law was arguably the most controversial part of the Compromise of 1850. The law carried a number of provisions that strengthened slaveholders in their pursuit of runaways. Federal commissioners were to be appointed with the power to issue warrants and mobilize posses. Suspected runaways were denied due process of law, and could be sent to the South on the basis of an owner's affidavit.

Southern opinion had been inflamed by a long record of Northern obstruction of the recovery of runaways. The so-called Georgia Platform adopted in late 1850 held that the fate of the union itself now depended on the North's faithful observance of the new fugitive slave act. Such cooperation was not forthcoming. Popular opposition to the recovery of slaves received frequent coverage in northern and southern newspapers. At the same time, a number of northern states passed stronger personal liberty laws. In Wisconsin, a reporter was arrested for encouraging a mob to free a captured runaway. The state court released him on a writ of habeas corpus (a court order determining an individual was confined illegally) and held the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional. Although the Supreme Court upheld the law in Abelman v. Booth (1859), the effort provided Southerners little comfort.

The single greatest blow to the Fugitive Slave Act and to the Southern cause came from northern printing presses. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act prompted Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) to write her famous novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, published in 1852. The novel was a powerful and convincing indictment against slavery, and over 300,000 copies of the novel were sold in a year, an astronomical amount for that time. Although the injustices of the Fugitive Slave Act and the emotions stirred by Stowe's novel did not likely convince most Americans that the abolition of slavery would justify a civil war or the dissolution of the Union, the outcomes of the Fugitive Slave Act did lead many Americans to reject any future efforts at political compromise over differences between the North and South.

See also: Civil War (Economic Causes of), Slavery, States' Rights

FURTHER READING

Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998.

David, Paul A. et al. Reckoning With Slavery: A Critical Study in the Quantitative History of American Negro Slavery. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.

Elkins, Stanley. Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959.

Franklin, John Hope and Schweninger, Loren. Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Gutman, Herbert G. The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925. New York: Pantheon, 1976.

Fugitive Slave Acts (1793, 1850)

Arthur G. LeFrancois

By the middle of the nineteenth century, the issue of slavery had caused a deep division between North and South. Slavery was an important part of the Southern way of life, and slave labor was a significant aspect of the Southern states' economy. Northerners opposed slavery yet were concerned that the political, economic, and ideological conflict with the South over slavery could threaten a civil war between the two sides.

The conflict intensified over the issue of fugitive, or escaped, slaves. Because slaves were treated as property in the South, slave owners felt it was their right to seek out and recapture slaves who had escaped to free Northern states. Northerners tended to view this practice as kidnapping. Many wondered if officials in the free states had a duty not to interfere with the slave owner or in fact had the power to declare the slave a free person. Article 4, section 2 of the Constitution stated that slaves who escaped to free states had to be surrendered to their owners upon demand. But although the Constitution recognized the institution of slavery and the rights of slave owners, it was still unclear just what the law required of the people and officials in free states in regard to the matter of fugitive slaves. In other words, enforcement of the Constitution on this matter was a gray area decades before the Civil War.

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT OF 1793

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 (1 Stat. 302) was an effort to provide a means to enforce the constitutional clause concerning escaped slaves. The act allowed a slave owner to seize an escaped slave, present the slave before a federal or local judge, and, upon proof of ownership, receive a certificate authorizing the slave to be retaken. It also established a penalty of 500 dollars for obstructing an owner's efforts to retake a slave, or for rescuing, harboring, or concealing a fugitive slave.

Some Northerners saw the act as providing an excuse for the kidnapping of free blacks. Others resented the ability of slave owners to reclaim slaves who might have escaped many years ago and who had new lives in the North. As a result, Northern states responded to the act by passing "personal liberty" laws, which protected alleged fugitive slaves in various ways. Southerners saw these laws as objectionable efforts to get around the act and the Constitution.

In 1842, in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, the Supreme Court held that Pennsylvania's personal liberty law of 1826 was unconstitutional. Edward Prigg had been convicted of kidnapping for taking a black woman and her children from Pennsylvania (a free state) to Maryland (a slave state). The Supreme Court overturned his conviction, holding that state laws could not permissibly interfere with the rights of slave owners reclaiming fugitive slaves. In 1847 the Court reaffirmed the constitutionality of the 1793 act in Jones v. Van Zandt.

Opponents of slavery resented these decisions, which sparked protest, resistance, and new laws and policies making the retaking of fugitive slaves more difficult and costly. Abolitionists effectively used the 1793 act and the court decisions upholding it to call attention to the evils of slavery. Southerners grew ever angrier and pressed for legislation that would more strongly protect their right to reclaim fugitive slaves.

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT OF 1850

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (9 Stat. 462) was an important part of the Compromise of 1850. On one side, Southerners sought to strengthen the fugitive slave law. On the other side, Northerners sought to respect the Constitution's fugitive slave clause and thereby preserve the Union by accommodating Southern anger over the fugitive slave issue. The act represented this effort to hold the country together.

Much longer than its 1793 predecessor, the 1850 act provided for federal commissioners to conduct hearings to grant or deny certificates permitting slave owners to retake fugitive slaves. Slave owners could either seize the person suspected to be a fugitive slave or procure a warrant directing a federal marshal to arrest the alleged fugitive before taking the person before a commissioner for a hearing. Under the act:

• • The alleged fugitive was not allowed to testify at the hearing.
• • Commissioners received twice as much compensation (ten dollars) for granting certificates as for denying them.
• • Federal marshals were financially liable for not trying to execute the warrants and for allowing fugitives to escape.
• • Penalties were increased for obstructing slave owners or helping fugitives, and included imprisonment.

Northerners saw this act as substantially more intrusive than the act of 1793, and their reaction was swift. Many people resisted and defied the law. In 1851, for example, Frederick Wilkins, known as Shadrach, a fugitive slave from Virginia, was rescued from a Boston courtroom and helped to escape to Canada. In some areas it was difficult to find people willing to do the duties required of commissioners under the act. Juries ignored evidence and acquitted people accused of violating the act. In June 1851 Harriet Beecher Stowe began publishing her influential antislavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, in weekly installments in the National Era magazine. Shortly afterward it was published in book form and sold widely, increasing Northerners' opposition to slavery.

In 1860 South Carolina seceded from the Union, and within months other states followed suit. The Civil War began in 1861. Three years later, in 1864, the Fugitive Slave Acts were repealed.

AN UNSUCCESSFUL ACCOMMODATION

The acts of 1793 and 1850 highlighted the uneasy accommodation between North and South on the issue of slavery. The acts offended Northern sensibilities that had turned against slavery. Northern social and legal reactions against the acts were threatening and insulting to Southerners. Southerners felt that some abolitionists in the North—and even some Northern legislatures—were encouraging slaves to revolt, a possibility that many Southerners greatly feared.

The Fugitive Slave Acts failed as part of an effort to hold the Union together. Instead, they highlighted differences on the issue of slavery. The acts also raised important issues about what it means to follow the rule of law and pursue justice under a Constitution that both promoted freedom and allowed slavery.

See also: Compromise of 1850; Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854; Missouri Compromise.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cover, Robert M. Justice Accused. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975.

Fehrenbacher, Don E. Slavery, Law, and Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.

Fehrenbacher, Don E. The Slaveholding Republic. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Finkelman, Paul. An Imperfect Union. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981.

Hall, Kermit L. The Law of American Slavery. New York: Garland Publishing, 1987.

Wiecek, William M. The Sources of Antislavery Constitutionalism in America, 1760–1848. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977.

Slave Reparations

Many people believe that the descendents of slaves should be compensated, or paid "reparations," for the injustices that their ancestors endured. Reparations have been paid to other groups who were treated unjustly, such as Japanese Americans interned during World War II. While some believe that reparations should be paid by the U.S. government, others have begun seeking compensation by filing lawsuits against corporations that benefited from slavery. Opponents of reparations argue that many black Americans are not descended from slaves, and that it would be difficult to establish who would be eligible for reparations. Furthermore, many white Americans are descended from people who immigrated to the United States after the Civil War, and so should not be blamed for slavery or made responsible for paying reparations. Proponents of reparations, on the other hand, argue that black Americans as a group continue to suffer from the legacy of slavery, regardless of their particular lineage. Some propose that reparations be paid into a fund that would finance education, health care, and economic opportunities for black Americans rather than be paid to individuals.

Fugitive Slave Laws

The U.S. Congress passed two fugitive slaves laws, the first in 1793 and the second in 1850. Each law set out the conditions under which escaped slaves could be caught and the procedures for returning them to their owners. These laws satisfied no one—slave owner or abolitionist—and served to highlight the broadening chasm between slaveholders and abolitionists that led up to the Civil War (1861–1865). Since its creation, the Constitution of the United States had permitted the existence of slavery in the nation, even allowing that escaped slaves could be caught and returned across state lines to their owners: "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" (Article II, Section 4). Yet many slave owners remained dissatisfied because they had wanted the Constitution to require fugitive slaves to be sought and returned in the same more rigorous way that laws provided for the return of common criminals to the state in which they had resided. Thus these slave owners did not find article 2, section 4, adequate and advocated for a stricter law.

CONDEMNING THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW

The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 elicited emotional rhetoric both in its support and in its condemnation. Below the anonymous abolitionist author focused his wrath on the northern majority in Congress and the president of the United States, Millard Fillmore:

Let every Northern man who voted for it, and all who were not in their seats to vote against it, be forthwith indicted and arraigned at the bar of public opinion, and made to render an account for their evil deeds; and let the political power and influence of the President, whose right hand signed the Bill, wilt and rot upon the body of his party. Let every officer, and every attorney, and every private citizen who shall attempt to aid or enforce the law, be looked upon with the eye of public contempt, until the blush of shame shall burn upon their cheeks, and let them and the party to which they may belong, and that shall put such craven-hearted persons in nomination, be remembered at the [b]allot box, as honest men and patriots should remember the enemies of God and their country. (p. 54)

SOURCE: The Liberator, September 27, 1850.

Opponents of slavery also looked to change the laws. If the time was not yet ripe for eliminating slavery, they wanted to protect the rights of emancipated or freeborn African Americans who might be kidnapped from states where slavery was illegal and sold into slavery in the slave states. When Governor Thomas Mifflin (1744–1800) of Pennsylvania put the question to President George Washington (1732–1799) in 1791, the president asked Congress to pass legislation dealing with it. Southerners quickly moved to protect the institution of slavery, whereas the northerners were unable to successfully mold the legislation to their liking despite holding a majority in the Senate. In his study Slavery and the Founders, Paul Finkelman (1996) suggests several reasons for the northerner's failure to form the legislation: "First, a majority of northerners were not overly concerned about slavery, even though they opposed the institution. Second, the southerners were able, even in the early 1790s, to create a united front to defend their most valuable institution. Finally, those few northerners who did oppose slavery appear to have misunderstood what was at stake." When Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law in 1793 it was not at all what the abolitionists intended.

While sections 1 and 2 dealt with criminal extradition cases, sections 3 and 4 pertained to the rendition of fugitive slaves: a slave owner or his agent would first capture an escaped slave; then the agent would bring the slave to appear before a federal, state, or local judge in the area where the slave was captured. The agent had to provide proof that the person in custody was the slave in question. This might be done verbally or through a document sworn before a magistrate in the location from which the slave had formally resided. If this proof were satisfactory, the official could issue a certificate of removal, allowing the captured slave to be transported across state lines. If anyone interfered with the legal process—sometimes antislavery advocates might kidnap a slave from a slave catcher—he or she could be sued by the owner of the slave for $500, a considerable sum at that time.

Conflict continued. Opponents of slavery continued to rally both legal (in the form of state personal liberty laws) and popular support to their cause; slaveholders sought greater protections under the law and greater facility in pursuing their claims. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 mandated that the federal courts appoint commissioners to deal with fugitive slave cases, specifically "to take acknowledgments of bail and affidavits, and to take depositions of witnesses in civil causes" (section 2). The law also mandated the use of federal marshals and deputy marshals to execute warrants, take custody of individuals, and deliver the recovered slaves to their destinations. If a marshal did not fulfill his duty, he would be fined $1000 for abetting a fugitive, imprisoned for up to six months, and perhaps sued by the slave owner for the price of the slave. Others who might impede the capture of a fugitive slave might face the same penalties.

Although President Millard Fillmore (1800–1874) signed the 1850 bill into law, he expressed reservations about it in a letter to attorney and statesman Daniel Webster (1782–1852):

[T]he law hav'g passed, must be executed. That so far as it provides for the surrender of fugitives from labor it is according to the requirements of the constitution and should be sustained against all attempts at repeal, but if there be any provision in it endangering the liberty of those who are free, it should be modified as to secure the free blacks from such an abuse of the object of the law, and that done we at the North have no just cause of complaint.

If slaveholders thought the new law would deter slaves from attempting escape, they were mistaken. Yet this was not a result of a lack of enforcement of the law, which was a misperception among some slave owners. In fact, The Raleigh Register (October 5, 1850) reported the following under the title The Fugitive Slave Law:

The first case under the new fugitive slave law came off in the city of New York yesterday, (Friday). The efficacy of the law for the purpose intended was fully apparent. No attempt was made to obstruct the officers in the discharge of their duty, nor to rescue the slave from them, as frequently happened under the old law; but the process went on with perfect quietness, and the slave was delivered to his owner, and carried off under an escort furnished by order of the Commissioner before whom the examination was held.

The federal government was upholding the law as required. According to Stanley Campbell (1970), records show that during the 1850s "the great majority of fugitive slaves claimed in federal tribunal were remanded to their owners. These slaves were returned despite hostile public opinion. In some quarters, this hostility manifested itself in violent resistance to enforcement; in other quarters it was manifested in jurisdictional disputes between state and federal courts. In only a small minority of cases were slaves rescued from federal custody."

One of these rare cases was that of Anthony Burns, a fugitive from Virginia who was working in a clothing store in Boston when he was arrested in 1884 for allegedly having robbed a jewelry store. The city officers took him bodily to the courthouse, where a U.S. marshal was waiting. Word of his arrest spread on the street and in a surprisingly short time a mob of abolitionists stormed the courthouse to free Burns. Yet they were unsuccessful: Burns was tried for being a fugitive slave, with the lawyer defending him using charges of an illegal arrest as a defense. In the end, Burns was remanded to his Virginia owners, but not before federal troops were called out to maintain the peace as Burns was escorted shipboard for his return into slavery.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Campbell, Stanley W. The Slave Catchers: Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, 1850–1860. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970.

Finkelman, Paul. Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996.

"The Fugitive Slave Law," Raleigh Register (Raleigh, North Carolina), October 5, 1850.

Severance, Frank H., ed. Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society, Millard Fillmore Papers. Buffalo, NY: Buffalo Historical Society, 1907.

Sources in U.S. History: Slavery in America. Gale. Available from http://galenet.galegroup.com/.

                                          Jeanne Lesinski

Fugitive Slave Laws

Fugitive slave laws were laws that allowed slave owners to recover runaway slaves from other states, even free states (nonslaveholding states). The laws had their basis in the U.S. Constitution and were made clear by a 1793 act. In 1850, when the conflict between North and South over slavery was becoming a national crisis, Congress passed another, much stronger, fugitive slave law to satisfy Southerners. Northerners were outraged by the new law, and this heightened tensions to the breaking point.

Article IV, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution said that “fugitives from labour”—that is, runaway slaves, apprentices, or indentured servants

(laborers contracted to serve for a certain number of years)—could not become legally free by escaping to other states, but instead had to be returned on the demand of the person to whom they “owed” service or labor. The Constitution did not say how this was to be enforced. Controversy arose in 1790 when three Virginia men, who claimed to be recapturing an escaped slave, were accused of kidnapping a free black man in the free state of Pennsylvania . The case led Congress to pass an act in 1793 that regulated the return of fugitive slaves.

The 1793 fugitive slave law

The 1793 act allowed a slave owner to seize an alleged (claimed, but not proven) fugitive slave and bring him or her before a judge to determine if he or she was in fact the runaway slave of the claimant (the person claiming to be the slave owner). If the judge agreed that the person was the slave of the claimant, he would issue a certificate of removal, which allowed the slaveholder to take the slave back to his home state. The law introduced a $500 fine for anyone interfering with the return of a fugitive slave and allowed the slaveholder to sue anyone who had helped the fugitive.

Many Northerners did not like the fugitive slave laws. Some Northern states passed their own laws, called personal liberty acts, to protect free blacks from being kidnapped by Southern slaveholders. Many Northerners also argued that Congress had no power to pass the fugitive slave laws; they claimed this was interfering with “states' rights.” The concept of states’ rights is based on the idea that the powers of the federal government are limited and should not be allowed to interfere with the powers of the states to govern themselves. Ironically, slavehold-ers routinely invoked the doctrine of states’ rights to help protect the institution of slavery in their states.

Compromise of 1850

The issue of runaway slaves again went before Congress in the Compromise of 1850 . The compromise attempted to defuse growing North-South tensions over slavery by creating an assortment of acts, some designed to please the North and others to please the South. The compromise called for the admission of California as a free state, the use of popular sovereignty (deciding by popular vote) to let residents of New Mexico and Utah decide whether their states would be slave states or free states, the prohibition of the slave trade in Washington, D.C. , and the passage of a stricter fugitive slave law.

The Fugitive Slave Act was the most controversial part of the Compromise of 1850. Under the new act, the federal government became responsible for finding and returning slaves who had escaped to free states. The law created a system in which federally appointed commissioners heard fugitive slave cases. The commissioners were empowered to call out the military or federal law enforcement officers to aid slave owners. Penalties for helping escaped slaves included $1,000 fines (a very high sum at that time) and six-month jail sentences. The slave in question could not testify or have a jury at his or her hearing. Slave owners could claim their slaves with very little evidence proving their “ownership.”

Moreover, a U.S. commissioner hearing such a case would get $5 if he decided in favor of the alleged slave, but $10 if he decided in favor of the master. This difference in fee was designed to compensate commissioners for the extra work of filling out certificates of removal, but to most Northerners it seemed a blatant attempt to bribe commissioners to help slave owners.

Response: North and South

Northerners condemned the Fugitive Slave Law and responded explosively to attempts to enforce it. The formerly peace-loving reformer Frederick Douglass (1817–1895) told an audience in Boston, Massachusetts , that if there was an attempt to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law in that city, the streets would run with blood. Indeed, the law led to riots in Boston and elsewhere. In 1851, a mob stormed a Boston courtroom to free a slave named Shadrack; in Syracuse, New York , a mob rescued a slave named Jerry from jail; and in Christiana, Pennsylvania, a slave owner was killed in a shoot-out with fugitive slaves. In 1854, citizens in Milwaukee, Wisconsin , led by abolitionist (antislavery activist) editor Sherman Booth (1812–1904), freed a slave named Joshua Glover from federal custody. In 1858, most of the students and faculty of Oberlin College charged a courthouse and freed a slave arrested in Wellington, Ohio .

One of the greatest blows to the Fugitive Slave Act came from writer Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896), whose outrage at the act inspired her to write her famous novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin , published in 1852. The novel, a convincing condemnation of slavery, had an immediate and powerful influence on public opinion. More than three hundred thousand copies were sold in its first year of publication, a huge number for that time.

The highly publicized slave rescues gave Southerners the impression that a vast Northern group of abolitionists was conspiring to interfere with their rights. In a proclamation called the Georgia Platform, adopted in late 1850, representatives of the Southern states warned that the fate of the Union (the United States as a united group of states) depended on the North's faithful observance of the new fugitive slave act.

In the long run, the Fugitive Slave Act did little to help slave owners recover runaway slaves, but it did much to undermine the Union. Northern outrage over the 1850 law helped empower the Republican Party , enabling the election of Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865; served 1861–65) as a president who firmly advocated restrictions on slavery. Meanwhile, in 1860 and 1861, a number of Southern states debated the issue of secession , or withdrawing from the Union. They cited failure to enforce the fugitive slave laws as one of their reasons. In 1861, the American Civil War (1861–65) between the North and the South began. A Republican-dominated Congress repealed both fugitive slave laws in 1864, and Lincoln signed the bill into law.

FUGITIVE SLAVE ACTS

FUGITIVE SLAVE ACTS. In 1793, Congress passed an act to implement the provision in the U.S. Constitution (Article IV, Section 2) stating that "fugitives from labour" should be returned "on demand" to the person to whom they owed "service or labour." The 1793 law allowed a master to bring an alleged fugitive slave before any state or federal judge or magistrate for a summary hearing to determine if the person seized was the claim-ant's runaway slave. The judge could accept any evidence he found persuasive on the status of the alleged slave. He could then issue a certificate of removal, allowing the claimant to take the slave back to his home state. The law provided a $500 fine for anyone interfering with the return of a fugitive slave. In addition, a master could sue anyone helping his slave for his costs plus the actual value of any slaves actually lost.

These liberal rules, as well as blatant kidnapping of free blacks, led northern states to pass personal liberty acts to protect their black residents from illegitimate removal. In the Supreme Court case of Prigg v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (1842) Justice Joseph Story, speaking for an 8–1 majority, upheld the 1793 law, struck down all state laws that interfered with the return of a fugitive slaves, and declared that slave owners had a common law right of recaption to remove any slave without any judicial hearing, if this seizure could be accomplished without any breach of the peace. Meanwhile, in Jones v. Van Zandt (1847), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a harsh interpretation of the 1793 law, which in effect applied to the north the southern legal presumption that all blacks were slaves until it could be proved otherwise.

Unable to protect their black residents, many free states passed new personal liberty laws withdrawing state support for enforcement of the 1793 law. Without state aid, slave owners had to rely on the tiny number of federal judges and marshals to aid them in their quest for runaway slaves.

In the wake of these new laws southerners demanded stronger federal enforcement, which led to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Technically an amendment of the 1793 law, the 1850 law was in reality an entirely new approach to the problem. The 1850 law allowed for the appointment of federal commissioners throughout the nation. These commissioners would hear fugitive slave cases and were empowered to call out federal marshals, posses, or the military to aid masters in recovering runaways. Penalties for violating the law included a $1,000 fine and a six-month jail sentence. In addition, anyone helping a fugitive slave could be sued for a $1,000 penalty to compensate the master for the loss of the slave.

Hearings before the commissioners were summary affairs, with no jury present. The alleged slave was denied access to the writ of habeas corpus and could not testify at the hearing. A U.S. Commissioner hearing the case would get $5 if he decided in favor of the alleged slave, but if he held for the master he would get $10. This disparity was in theory designed to compensate commissioners for the extra work of filling out certificates of removal, but to most northerners it seemed a blatant attempt to help slavery at the expense of justice.

The law led to riots, rescues, and resistance in a number of places. In 1851 a mob stormed a courtroom in Boston to free the slave Shadrach; in Syracuse a mob rescued the slave Jerry from a jail; and in Christiana, Pennsylvania, a master was killed in a shootout with fugitive slaves. In 1854, Milwaukee citizens led by the abolitionist editor Sherman Booth freed the slave Joshua Glover from federal custody, and, in 1858, most of the students and faculty of Oberlin College charged a courthouse and freed a slave arrested in Wellington, Ohio. All of these cases led to prosecutions, but most were unsuccessful or led to only token penalties. In Ableman v. Booth (1859), the U.S. Supreme Court firmly upheld the 1850 law and asserted that states could interfere with the federal courts.

In the long run, the fugitive slave laws did little to help recover runaway slaves, but they did much to under-mine the Union. Outrage over the 1850 law in the North helped create the constituency for the Republican Party and the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Meanwhile, a number of southern states cited failure to enforce the fugitive slave laws as one of their reasons for secession (1861). In 1864, the Republican-dominated Congress repealed both fugitive slave laws.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Campbell, Stanley W. The Slave Catchers: Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, 1850–1860. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970.

Finkelman, Paul. Slavery in the Courtroom: An Annotated Bibliography of American Cases. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1985.

———. "Story Telling on the Supreme Court: Prigg v. Pennsylvania and Justice Joseph Story's Judicial Nationalism." Supreme Court Review (1994): 247–294.

Morris, Thomas D. Free Men All: The Personal Liberty Laws of the North, 1780–1861. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974.

PaulFinkelman

See alsoAntislavery ; Slave Insurrections ; Slave Rescue Cases ; Slavery ; Underground Railroad .