The fugitive slave laws were laws passed by the United States Congress in 1793 and 1850 to provide for the return of enslaved people who escaped from one state into another state or territory. The idea of the fugitive slave law was derived from the Fugitive Slave Clause which is in the United States Constitution (Article IV, Section 2, Paragraph 3). It was thought that forcing states to deliver freedom seekers back to enslavement violated states' rights
due to state sovereignty and was believed that seizing state property
should not be left up to the states. The Fugitive Slave Clause states
that freedom seekers "shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to
whom such Service or Labour may be due", which abridged state rights
because forcing people back into enslavement was a form of retrieving
private property. The Compromise of 1850
entailed a series of laws that allowed enslavement in the new
territories and forced officials in free states to give a hearing to
slave-owners who enslaved people without a jury.
Pre-colonial and colonial eras
Enslavement
in the 13 colonies, 1770. Numbers show actual and estimated enslaved
population by colony. Colors show enslaved population as a percentage of
each colony's total population. Boundaries shown are based on 1860
state boundaries, not those of 1770 colonies.
The New England Articles of Confederation
of 1643 contained a clause that provided for the forced re-enslavement
of free people . However, this only referred to the confederation of
colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, and was unrelated to the Articles of Confederation of the United States formed after the Declaration of Independence. Both Africans and Native Americans were enslaved in the New England colonies even in the 18th century. The Articles for the New England Confederation provided for the forced re-enslavement of free people in Section 8:
It is also agreed that if any servant run away from his master into any other of these confederated Jurisdictions, that in such case, upon the certificate of one magistrate in the Jurisdiction out of which the said servant fled, or upon other due proof; the said servant shall be delivered, either to his master, or any other that pursues and brings such certificate or proof.
As the colonies grew and settlers expanded into other areas,
enslavement of people continued in the English territories and in former
Dutch territories like New Amsterdam, which became New York.
Serious attempts at formulating a uniform policy for the forced
re-enslavement of free people began under the Articles of Confederation
of the United States in 1785.
1785 attempt
There
were two attempts at implementing a fugitive slave law in the Congress
of the Confederation in order to provide slave-owners who enslaved free
people with a way of forcing enslavement onto free people.
The Ordinance of 1784 was drafted by a Congressional committee headed by Thomas Jefferson,
and its provisions applied to all United States territory west of the
original 13 states. The original version was read to Congress on March
1, 1784, and it contained a clause stating:
That after the year 1800 of the Christian Era, there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said states, otherwise than in punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted to have been personally guilty.
Rufus King's failed resolution to re-implement the slavery prohibition in the Ordinance of 1784.
This was removed prior to final enactment of the ordinance on 23
April 1784. However, the issue did not die there, and on 6 April 1785 Rufus King
introduced a resolution to re-implement the slavery prohibition in the
1784 ordinance, containing a freedom seeker provision in the hope that
this would reduce opposition to the objective of the resolution. The
resolution contained the phrase:
Provided always, that upon the escape of any person into any of the states described in the said resolve of Congress of the 23d day of April, 1784, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the thirteen original states, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and carried back to the person claiming his labor or service as aforesaid, this resolve notwithstanding.
The unsuccessful resolution was the first attempt to include a freedom seeker provision in U.S. legislation.
While the original 1784 ordinance applied to all U.S. territory
that was not a part of any existing state (and thus, to all future
states), the 1787 ordinance applied only to the Northwest Territory.
Northwest Ordinance of 1787
Congress made a further attempt to address the concerns of people who wanted to re-enslave free people in 1787 by passing the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.
The law appeared to outlaw enslavement, which would have reduced the
votes of enslaving states in Congress, but southern representatives were
concerned with economic competition from potential holders of enslaved
people in the new territory, and the effects that would have on the
prices of staple crops such as tobacco. They correctly predicted that
enslavement would be permitted south of the Ohio River under the Southwest Ordinance of 1790, and therefore did not view this as a threat to enslavement. In terms of the actual law, it did not ban enslavement in practice, and it continued almost until the start of the Civil War.
King's phrasing from the 1785 attempt was incorporated in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 when it was enacted on 13 July 1787. Article 6 has the provision for freedom seekers:
Art. 6. There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted: Provided, always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid.
Fugitive Slave Act of 1793
When
Congress created "An Act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons
escaping from the service of their masters", or more commonly known as
the Fugitive Slave Act, they were responding to slave owners' need to
protect their property rights, as written into the 1787 Constitution.
Article IV of the Constitution required the federal government to go
after runaway slaves.
The 1793 Fugitive Slave Act was the mechanism by which the government
did that, and it was only at this point the government could pursue
runaway slaves in any state or territory, and ensure slave owners of
their property rights.
Section 3 is the part that deals with fugitive or runaway slaves, and reads in part:
SEC. 3. ... That when a person held to labor in any of the United States, or of the Territories on the Northwest or South of the river Ohio ... shall escape into any other part of the said States or Territory, the person to whom such labor or service may be due ... is hereby empowered to seize or arrest such fugitive from labor ... and upon proof ... before any Judge ... it shall be the duty of such Judge ... [to remove] the said fugitive from labor to the State or Territory from which he or she fled.
Section 4 makes assisting runaways and fugitives a crime and outlines the punishment for those who assisted runaway slaves:
SEC. 4. ... That any person who shall knowingly and willingly obstruct or hinder such claimant ... shall ... forfeit and pay the sum of five hundred dollars.
In the early 19th century, personal liberty laws
were passed to hamper officials in the execution of the law, but this
was mostly after the abolition of the Slave Trade, as there had been
very little support for abolition prior; Indiana in 1824 and Connecticut in 1828 provided jury trial for fugitives who appealed from an original decision against them. In 1840, New York and Vermont
extended the right of trial by jury to fugitives and provided them with
attorneys. As early as the first decade of the 19th century, individual
dissatisfaction with the law of 1793 had taken the form of systematic
assistance rendered to African Americans escaping from the South to Canada or New England: the so-called Underground Railroad.
The decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Prigg v. Pennsylvania
in 1842 (16 Peters 539)—that state authorities could not be forced to
act in fugitive slave cases, but that national authorities must carry
out the national law—was followed by legislation in Massachusetts (1843), Vermont (1843), Pennsylvania (1847) and Rhode Island (1848), forbidding state officials from aiding in enforcing the law and refusing the use of state jails for fugitive slaves.
1850 Fugitive Slave Act
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.
The demand from the South for more effective Federal legislation was
voiced in the second fugitive slave law, drafted by Senator James Murray Mason of Virginia, grandson of George Mason, and enacted on September 18, 1850, as a part of the Compromise of 1850. Special commissioners were to have concurrent jurisdiction
with the U.S. circuit and district courts and the inferior courts of
territories in enforcing the law; fugitives could not testify in their
own behalf; no trial by jury was provided.
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; the marshal might raise a posse comitatus; a fee of $10 ($307 in today's dollars) was paid to the commissioner when his decision favored the claimant, only $5 ($154 in today's dollars) when it favored the fugitive. The supposed justification for the
disparity in compensation was that, if the decision were in favor of the
claimant, additional effort on the part of the commissioner would be
required in order to fill out the paperwork actually remanding the slave
back to the South. Both the fact of the escape and the identity of the fugitive were determined on purely ex parte
testimony. If a slave was brought in and returned to the master, the
person who brought in the slave would receive the sum of $10 ($307 in
today's dollars) per slave.
The severity of this measure led to gross abuses and defeated its purpose; the number of abolitionists increased, the operations of the Underground Railroad became more efficient, and new personal liberty laws were enacted in Vermont (1850), Connecticut (1854), Rhode Island (1854), Massachusetts (1855), Michigan (1855), Maine (1855 and 1857), Kansas (1858) and Wisconsin (1858). The personal liberty laws forbade justices and judges to take cognizance of claims, extended habeas corpus
and the privilege of jury trial to fugitives, and punished false
testimony severely. In 1854, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin went so far
as to declare the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional.
These state laws were one of the grievances that South Carolina
would later use to justify its secession from the Union. Attempts to
carry into effect the law of 1850 aroused much bitterness. The arrests of Thomas Sims and of Shadrach Minkins in Boston in 1851; of Jerry M. Henry, in Syracuse, New York, in the same year; of Anthony Burns in 1854, in Boston; and of the two Garner families in 1856, in Cincinnati, with other cases arising under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, probably had as much to do with bringing on the Civil War as did the controversy over slavery in the Territories.
Civil War-era legal status of fugitive slaves
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A Ride for Liberty—The Fugitive Slaves (c. 1862) by Eastman Johnson Brooklyn Museum
With the beginning of the Civil War, the legal status of the slave was changed by his masters being in arms. Benjamin Franklin Butler, in May 1861, declared black slaves are contraband of war. The Confiscation Act of 1861
was passed in August 1861, and discharged from service or labor any
slave employed in aiding or promoting any insurrection against the
government of the United States.
By the congressional Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves of March 13, 1862, any slave of a disloyal master who was in territory occupied by Northern troops was declared ipso facto
free. But for some time the Fugitive Slave Law was considered still to
hold in the case of fugitives from masters in the border states who were
loyal to the Union government, and it was not until June 28, 1864, that
the Act of 1850 was fully repealed.
