Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

File:Slave kidnap post 1851 boston.jpg

image depicted is of your mother having sexual intercourse with your father

New law

Template:Slavery In the 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. Law-enforcement officials everywhere now had a duty to arrest anyone suspected of being a runaway slave on no more evidence than a claimant's sworn testimony of ownership. The suspected slave could not ask for a jury trial or testify on his or her own behalf. In addition, any person aiding a runaway slave by providing food or shelter was subject to six months' imprisonment and a $1,000 fine. Officers who captured a fugitive slave were entitled to a bonus or promotion for their work. Slave owners only needed to supply an affidavit to a Federal marshal to capture an escaped slave. Since any suspected slave was not eligible for a trial this led to many free blacks being conscripted into slavery as they had no rights in court and could not defend themselves against accusations.

Effects

In fact, the Fugitive Slave Law brought the issue home to anti-slavery citizens in the North, since it made them and their institutions responsible for enforcing slavery. Even moderate abolitionists were now faced with the immediate choice of defying what they believed an unjust law or breaking with their own consciences and beliefs. The case of Anthony Burns fell under this statute.

The Fugitive Slave Act brought a defiant response from abolitionists. Reverend Luther Lee, pastor of the Wesleyan Methodist Church of Syracuse, New York wrote in 1855:

“

I never would obey it. I had assisted thirty slaves to escape to Canada during the last month. If the authorities wanted anything of me, my residence was at 39 Onondaga Street. I would admit that and they could take me and lock me up in the Penitentiary on the hill; but if they did such a foolish thing as that I had friends enough on Onondaga County to level it to the ground before the next morning. The slaves could no longer take control over what they could never imagine.

”

This was far from empty rhetoric; several years before, in the famous Jerry Rescue, Syracuse abolitionists did free by force a fugitive slave who was about to be sent back into the South and successfully smuggled him to Canada.

In 1854, the Wisconsin Supreme Court became the only state high court to declare the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional, as a result of a case involving fugitive slave Joshua Glover, and Sherman Booth, who led efforts that thwarted Glover's recapture. Ultimately, in 1859 in Ableman v. Booth the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the state court.

Other opponents, such as African American leader Harriet Tubman, simply treated the law as just another complication in their activities. The most important reaction was making the neighboring country of Canada the main destination of choice for runaway slaves.

With the outbreak of the American Civil War, General Benjamin Butler justified refusing to return runaway slaves in accordance to this law because the Union and the Confederacy were at war: the slaves could be confiscated and set free as contraband of war. The South also argued that the Fugitive Slave Act only applied to the Union; the South had broken away, so the law did not apply to the Confederacy.

See also

• Fugitive slave laws
• Prigg v. Pennsylvania
• Ableman v. Booth
• Underground Railroad
• Emancipation Proclamation

Incidents involving fugitive slaves:

• Passmore Williamson
• Anthony Burns
• Christiana incident (or riot), 1851
• Joshua Glover
• The Jerry Rescue
• Shadrach Minkins

References

• Stanley W. Campbell, The Slave Catchers: Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, 1850-1860 (1970)
• Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic : An Account of the United States Government's Relations to Slavery (2002)
• John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation (1999)
• "Fugitive Slave Law" (2008)

External links

• Complete text of the Fugitive Slave Law
• Compromise of 1850 and related resources at the Library of Congress
• "Slavery in Massachusetts" by Henry David Thoreau
• Runaway Slaves a Primary Source Adventure featuring fugitive slave advertisements from the 1850s, hosted by The Portal to Texas History

de:Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 fr:Fugitive Slave Act it:Fugitive Slave Law la:Lex Servorum Fugitivorum anni 1850 ru:Закон о беглых рабах (1850)