Fugitive Slave Act

(noun)

The fugitive slave laws were laws passed by the United States Congress in 1793 and 1850 to provide for the return of slaves who escaped from one state into another state or territory.

Related Terms

Examples of Fugitive Slave Act in the following topics:

  • The Fugitive Slave Act

    • The Fugitive Slave Act, passed in 1850, caused controversy and contributed to Northern fears of a 'slave power conspiracy'.
    • By 1843, several hundred slaves a year were successfully escaping to the North, making slavery untenable in the border states.The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 required the return of runaway slaves by requiring authorities in free states to return fugitive slaves to their masters.However, many Northern states found ways to circumvent the Fugitive Slave Act.Some jurisdictions passed “personal liberty laws”, which mandated a jury trial before alleged fugitive slaves could be moved.
    • In 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.
    • The Fugitive Slave Act was met with violent protest in the North.
    • Explain the economic and political context to the Fugitive Slave Act and how Northerners responded to it

  • The Election of 1852

    • During his years in office, Pierce’s support of the Compromise of 1850--particularly his rigorous enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act--appalled and alienated many Northerners, including factions of the Democratic Party.
    • With the demise of the Whig party, many Northerners, bitterly resenting the heavy enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act under Pierce, began to loosely coalesce with the emerging antislavery Republican party.

  • The Compromise of 1850

    • The Compromise of 1850 left the question of slave versus free states to popular sovereignty.
    • The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 would be passed into law.
    • The slave trade would be abolished in the District of Columbia.
    • In the Compromise of 1850, popular sovereignty was not defined as a guiding principle on the slave issue going forward.
    • Furthermore, the bill's strengthening of the Fugitive Slave Act angered many Northerners, and even provoked violence in northern cities.

  • The Underground Railroad

    • With heavy political lobbying, the Compromise of 1850, passed by Congress after the Mexican-American War, stipulated a more stringent Fugitive Slave Law.
    • Federal marshals and professional bounty hunters known as slave catchers pursued fugitives as far as the Canadian border.
    • The risk was not limited solely to actual fugitives.
    • Under the terms of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, when suspected fugitives were seized and brought to a special magistrate known as a commissioner, they had no right to a jury trial and could not testify on their own behalf.
    • Upon arriving at their destinations, many fugitives were disappointed.

  • Forming a Slave Community

    • Using psychology, Blassingame analyzes fugitive slave narratives published in the 19th century to conclude that an independent culture developed among the enslaved and that there were a variety of personality types exhibited by slaves.
    • The importance of The Slave Community as one of the first studies of slavery from the perspective of the slave was recognized by historians.
    • He asserts that the retention of African culture acted as a form of resistance to enslavement.
    • Slave marriages were illegal in southern states, and slave couples were frequently separated by slaveowners through sale.
    • African-American slaves dancing to banjo and percussion.

  • Slave Religion

    • Using psychology, Blassingame analyzes fugitive slave narratives published in the 19th century to conclude that an independent culture developed among the enslaved.
    • He asserts that the retention of African culture acted as a form of resistance to enslavement: "All things considered, the...Africans enslaved in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America appear to have survived their traumatic experiences without becoming abjectly docile, infantile or submissive" and "since an overwhelming percentage of nineteenth-century Southern slaves were native Americans, they never underwent this kind of shock [the Middle Passage] and were in a position to construct psychological defenses against total dependency on their masters. "
    • Slave marriages were illegal in southern states, and slave couples were frequently separated by slave owners through sale.
    • Blassingame grants that slave owners did have control over slave marriages.
    • In the quarters, he "acted like a man," castigating whites for the mistreatment of himself and his family.

  • Slavery and Liberty

    • Section 9 of Article I allowed the continued "importation" of slaves.
    • In 1850, Congress (disproportionally represented by Southerners) passed a more stringent fugitive slave federal law.
    • Penalties were imposed upon marshals who refused to enforce the law or from whom a fugitive should escape, and upon individuals who aided black people to escape .
    • Massachusetts had abolished slavery in 1783, but the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 required government officials to assist slavecatchers in capturing fugitives within the state.
    • A Ride for Liberty – The Fugitive Slaves by Eastman Johnson

  • Union Politics

    • As the war progressed, emancipation remained a risky political act that had little public support.
    • The first of these laws to be implemented was the First Confiscation Act of August 1861, which authorized the confiscation of any Confederate property, including slaves, by Union forces.
    • In March 1862, Congress approved a Law Enacting an Additional Article of War, which forbade Union Army officers from returning fugitive slaves to their owners.
    • In June 1862, Congress passed a Law Enacting Emancipation in the Federal Territories, and in July, passed the Second Confiscation Act, which contained provisions intended to liberate slaves held by rebels.
    • The latter act also declared that any Confederate official, military or civilian, who did not surrender within 60 days of the act's passage would have their slaves freed.

  • From Gradualism to Abolition

    • An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, passed by the Pennsylvania legislature on March 1, 1780, was the first attempt by a government in the Western Hemisphere to begin the abolition of slavery.
    • The Act prohibited further importation of slaves into the state, required Pennsylvania slaveholders to annually register their slaves (under pain of forfeiture for noncompliance, and manumission for the enslaved), and established that all children born in Pennsylvania were free persons regardless of the condition or race of their parents.
    • In 1847, the Pennsylvania legislature passed another act freeing its slaves altogether.
    • Their gradual abolition laws freed future children of slaves at their birth, and all slaves after a certain date or period of years.
    • Though illegal under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, participants like Harriet Tubman, Henry Highland Garnet, Alexander Crummell, Amos Noë Freeman and others put themselves at risk to help slaves escape to freedom.

  • The Old South

    • Many individual acts of manumission freed thousands of slaves in total.
    • Outraged by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Stowe emphasized the horrors of slavery.
    • Rhode Island had limited slave trading in 1774.
    • (Virginia had also attempted to do so before the Revolution, but the Privy Council had vetoed the act.)
    • These northern emancipation acts typically provided that slaves born before the law was passed would be freed at a certain age, so remnants of slavery lingered.