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 History24 (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
