Fugitive slave

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U.S. laws of 1793 and 1850 (repealed in 1864) that provided for the seizure and return of runaway slaves. The 1793 law authorized a judge alone to decide the status of an alleged fugitive slave. Northern opposition led to enactment of state personal-liberty laws that entitled slaves to a jury trial and as early as 1810 prompted individuals to aid the Underground Railroad. Increased pressure from the South brought passage of the second statute in 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850. It imposed penalties on federal marshals who refused to enforce the law and on individuals who helped slaves to escape; fugitives could not testify on their own behalf, nor were they permitted a jury trial. Its severity led to increased interest in the abolition movement. Additional personal-liberty laws enacted by northern states to thwart the act were cited by South Carolina as justification for its secession in 1860.

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In colonial America the interjurisdictional return of runaway slaves was sporadic, despite occasional agreements on the matter, such as that in the New England Confederation of 1643. In Somerset v. Stewart (1772), the Court of King's Bench ruled that any slave who came to England, either by the voluntary action of his master or by running away, might claim his freedom because there was no positive law establishing slavery in England. This precedent was part of the American common law when some of the newly independent American states began to abolish slavery during the Revolution. Pennsylvania's Gradual Emancipation Act of 1780 allowed for the recapture of fugitive slaves, as did similar laws passed in other states. The Articles of Confederation, however, did not obligate states to return fugitive slaves. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory but also provided that a fugitive slave “may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service.”

Late in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, South Carolina's Pierce Butler proposed a clause to “require fugitive slaves and servants to be delivered up like criminals.” The next day, without any further debate or recorded dissent, the delegates adopted what became the Fugitive Slave Clause, providing that runaways could not be emancipated in the states to which they escaped but were to “be delivered up on Claim of the party to whom such service or labour may be due.” The framers seemed to contemplate enforcement of the clause by state and local governments or through individual action. The location of the clause in Article IV, alongside other clauses dealing with interstate relations, supports this analysis.

In the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793, Congress spelled out procedure for the return of runaways. The law allowed masters or their agents capturing fugitives to bring them to any magistrate, state or federal, to obtain a “certificate of removal” and then to take the runaway back to the state where the slave owed service. The law provided fines for those who interfered with the rendition process and preserved masters' rights to seek damages from those who knowingly helped fugitive slaves.

Before the 1830s many northern states passed personal‐liberty laws to protect their free black populations from kidnapping or mistaken seizure. These statutes also provided state procedures to facilitate the return of bona fide fugitives. The northern states balanced protection of their free black population from kidnapping against compliance with their constitutional obligation to return runaway slaves. Until 1842 the constitutionality of both the state laws and the federal law remained in doubt. However, in Jack v. Martin (1835), New York's highest court declared the federal law unconstitutional but remanded the runaway slave Jack to his owner because the court believed New York was obligated to enforce the Fugitive Slave Clause of Article IV. A year later, in an unpublished opinion, Chief Justice Joseph Hornblower of New Jersey declared the federal law of 1793 unconstitutional and also declared the black man in question free.

In Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842), U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story held that the 1793 law was constitutional and that state personal‐liberty laws interfering with the rendition process were not. Story characterized the Fugitive Slave Clause as a “fundamental article” of the Constitution necessary for its adoption, even though the history of the clause, which Story knew, shows that this was not true (p. 541). Story urged state officials to continue to enforce the 1793 law but stated that they could not be required to do so. A number of states soon passed new personal‐liberty laws prohibiting their officials from acting under the federal law.

In Jones v. Van Zandt (1847), the Supreme Court upheld a particularly harsh interpretation of the 1793 law in a civil suit for the value of slaves who had escaped from Kentucky to Ohio, where Van Zandt offered them a ride in his wagon. Van Zandt's attorneys, Salmon P. Chase and William H. Seward, unsuccessfully argued that in Ohio all people were presumed free and thus Van Zandt had no reason to know he was transporting runaway slaves.

As part of the Compromise of 1850, Congress revised the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act, creating more arbitrary rendition procedures and harsher penalties. Under this statute, accused fugitives could not testify on their own behalf or benefit from trial by jury. In reaction to state refusals to participate in the rendition process, the 1850 law provided federal commissioners, appointed in every county in the country, to enforce the law. They received five dollars if they decided that the black person before them was not a slave but were paid ten dollars if they found in favor of the claimant. Popular opposition to the law increased after the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe's highly successful fictional attack on slavery, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852).

The 1850 law led to riots, rescues, and recaptures in Boston, Massachusetts; Syracuse, New York; Christiana, Pennsylvania; Oberlin, Ohio; Racine, Wisconsin; and elsewhere. Federal prosecutions of rescuers often failed. In Christiana more than forty men were indicted for treason after a group of fugitives fought their would‐be captors and killed a slaveowner. The defendants were released when U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Grier, on circuit, ruled in United States v. Hanway (1851) that opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act did not constitute treason. After these incidents, the act was a dead letter in much of the North. In Ableman v. Booth (1859), stemming from the Racine rescue, the Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of the 1850 law and the supremacy of the federal courts.

Peaceful enforcement of the 1850 law was sometimes possible, especially along the Ohio River and the Mason‐Dixon line. Some removals required a show of federal force and the use of troops. Under the 1850 act, more than nine hundred fugitives were returned between 1850 and 1861. Southerners estimated, however, that as many as ten thousand slaves escaped during that period.

Ultimately the Fugitive Slave Clause and the two statutes passed to enforce it did little to protect southern property but did much to antagonize sectional feelings. Southerners saw the North as unwilling to fulfill its constitutional obligation. Northerners believed the South was trying to force them to become slave catchers and, in the process, to undermine civil liberties in the nation.

See also Comity; Fugitives from Justice; State Sovereignty and States' Rights.

Bibliography

• Paul Finkelman, Prigg v. Pennsylvania and Northern State Courts: Anti‐Slavery Use of a Pro‐Slavery Decision, Civil War History 24 (March 1979): 5–35.
• Paul Finkelman, An Imperfect Union: Slavery, Federalism, and Comity (1981).
• Thomas D. Morris, Free Men All: The Personal Liberty Laws of the North, 1780–1861 (1974)

— Paul Finkelman

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.

—Paul Finkelman

A law passed as part of the Compromise of 1850, which provided southern slaveholders with legal weapons to capture slaves who had escaped to the free states. The law was highly unpopular in the North and helped to convert many previously indifferent northerners to antislavery.

runaway slave advertisement

In the history of slavery in the United States, "fugitive slaves" (or runaway slaves) were slaves who had escaped from their master to travel to a place where slavery was banned or illegal. Many went to northern territories including Pennsylvania and Massachussetts until the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed. Because of this, fugitive slaves had to leave the country, traveling to Canada or Mexico. During the time slavery was legal in the United States, approximately 100,000 slaves escaped to freedom.

Fugitive slaves early in U.S. were sought out just as they were through the Fugitive slave law years, but early efforts included only Wanted posters, flyers ect.. After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed Bounty hunters and civilians could lawfully capture escaped slaves in the north, or any other place, and return them to the Slave master. Many escaped slaves upon return were to face harsh and horrid punishments such as amputation of limbs, whippings, branding, and many other unthinkable acts.^[1] Escaped slaves were not the only ones sought after during these ordeals, people who aided escapees were also punished by legal law as seen in the case of Ableman v. Booth, where Booth was charged with aiding Glover's escape by preventing his capture from Federal Marshals. Many states tried to nullify the new slave act or prevent capture of escaped slaves by setting up new laws to protect their rights. This is shown in many forms of law, but one most notable is the Massachusetts Liberty Act. This Act was passed in order to keep escaped slaves from being returned to their masters by stopping the abduction of Federal Marshals or bounty hunters.^[2] Also in the previously mentioned Supreme Court Case Ableman v. Booth, the actions that spurred the accused was the attempt of Wisconsin to rule The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 Unconstitutional.^[3]

When mere laws didn't suffice to aid abolitionists, they along with the slaves turned to drastic measures in order to undermine slave owners. Such ideas as the Underground Railroad, breaking work tools ect...were used to either silently get back at them or just flat out stop slavery. Breaking work tools was a common way for slaves to get back at their masters.^[4] By impeding the work they could do it also halted the amount of money that could be made off that slave by the master. The Underground Railroad is probably one of the most well known ways that abolitionists aided slaves out of the south and into northern states. In this manner the slaves would go from house to house of either whites or freed blacks where they would receive shelter, food, clothing ect..

Now when the slaves were found gone, most masters did everything they could to find their lost “property.” Flyers would be put up, posses to find him/her would be sent out, and under the new Fugitive slave Act they could now send federal marshals into the north to extract them. This new law also brought up bounty hunters to the game of returning slaves to their masters, even if the “slave” had already been freed he could be brought back into the south to be sold back into slavery if he/ she was without their freedom papers. In 1851 there was a case of a Black Coffee house waiter who was snatched by Federal Marshals on behalf of John Debree who claimed the man to be his property.^[5] Even though the man had escaped earlier, his case was brought before the Massachusetts supreme court to be tried.

Contents 1 The Underground Railroad 2 Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 3 Harriet Tubman 4 See also 5 References

The Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad was a network of abolitionists between 1816 and 1859 who helped fugitive slaves escape to freedom. The Religious Society of Friends(Quakers,) Baptists, Methodists and other religious sects helped in operating the Underground Railroad. Notable people who used the Underground Railroad include:

• Anderson Ruffin Abbott
• Henry "Box" Brown
• Levi Coffin
• Frederick Douglass
• Calvin Fairbank
• Thomas Garrett
• William Lloyd Garrison
• Samuel Green
• Josiah Bushnell Grinnell
• Josiah Henson
• Isaac Hopper
• Roger Hooker Leavitt
• Samuel J. May
• John Parker
• John Wesley Posey
• John Rankin
• Alexander Milton Ross
• David Ruggles
• Samuel Seawell
• William Still
• Sojourner Truth
• Harriet Tubman
• Charles Augustus Wheaton

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, part of the Compromise of 1850, was a law enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives that declared that all fugitive slaves be returned to their masters. Because the South agreed to have California enter as a free state, The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was created. The act was passed on September 18, 1850, and it was repealed on June 28, 1864.

Harriet Tubman

One of the most notable fugitive slaves of American history and conductors of the Underground Railroad is Harriet Tubman. Born in Dorchester County, Maryland around 1822, Tubman grew up a slave. As a young adult, Harriet Tubman escaped from her master’s plantation in 1849. Between 1850 and 1860 she helped approximately 300 slaves escape from slavery, including her parents. During this time, there was a $40,000 bounty over her head for anyone who could capture her and bring her back to slavery. Many people called her the “Moses of her people.” Harriet Tubman also worked as a spy during the American Civil War.

See also

• Slave Trade Compromise and Fugitive Slave Clause
• Article Four of the United States Constitution
• Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
• Fugitive Slave Acts
• History of Slavery in the United States
• Harriet Tubman
• Abolitionism
• History of Slavery

References

• http://maap.columbia.edu/place/33
• http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASrunaways.htm
• http://www.nps.gov/undergroundrr/ugsum.htm
• http://www.slavenorth.com/slavenorth.htm
• http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2944.html
• http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/history/hs_es_overview.htm
• http://library.thinkquest.org/5643/slaves.htm
• http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9803E1DC123CE433A2575AC2A96F9C94669ED7CF

v • d • e Underground Railroad People Levi Coffin  • William Cooper Nell  • William Still  • Sojourner Truth  • Harriet Beecher Stowe  • Harriet Tubman Places Indiana  • Levi Coffin House  • Bialystoker Synagogue  • Town Clock Church  • National Underground Railroad Freedom Center Events Second Great Awakening  • Oberlin-Wellington Rescue  • Pearl incident  • Uncle Tom's Cabin  • Thirteenth Amendment Topics Abolitionists  • African-Americans  • Quilts  • Songs See also: Slavery in the United States and Slavery in Canada

1. ^ Bland, Lecater Bland, Voices of the Fugitives: Run away Slave stories and their fictions of self creation Greenwood Press, 2000
2. ^ http://eca.state.gov/education/engteaching/pubs/AmLnC/br20.htm
3. ^ http://www.wicourts.gov/about/organization/supreme/docs/famouscases01.pdf
4. ^ Bland, Lecater Bland, Voices of the Fugitives: Run away Slave stories and their fictions of self creation Greenwood Press, 2000
5. ^ Schwarz, Frederic D. American Heritage, Feb/Mar2001, Vol. 52 Issue 1, p96

* http://www.wicourts.gov/about/organization/supreme/docs/famouscases01.pdf

• http://eca.state.gov/education/engteaching/pubs/AmLnC/br20.htm
• Schwarz, Frederic D. American Heritage, Feb/Mar2001, Vol. 52 Issue 1, p96
• Bland, Lecater Bland, Voices of the Fugitives: Run away Slave stories and their fictions of self creation Greenwood Press, 2000

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