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, slaveholders 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.