Fugitive Slave Laws

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Fugitive Slave Laws

The U.S. Congress passed two fugitive slaves laws, the first in 1793 and the second in 1850. Each law set out the conditions under which escaped slaves could be caught and the procedures for returning them to their owners. These laws satisfied no one—slave owner or abolitionist—and served to highlight the broadening chasm between slaveholders and abolitionists that led up to the Civil War (1861–1865). Since its creation, the Constitution of the United States had permitted the existence of slavery in the nation, even allowing that escaped slaves could be caught and returned across state lines to their owners: "No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due" (Article II, Section 4). Yet many slave owners remained dissatisfied because they had wanted the Constitution to require fugitive slaves to be sought and returned in the same more rigorous way that laws provided for the return of common criminals to the state in which they had resided. Thus these slave owners did not find article 2, section 4, adequate and advocated for a stricter law.

CONDEMNING THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW

The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 elicited emotional rhetoric both in its support and in its condemnation. Below the anonymous abolitionist author focused his wrath on the northern majority in Congress and the president of the United States, Millard Fillmore:

Let every Northern man who voted for it, and all who were not in their seats to vote against it, be forthwith indicted and arraigned at the bar of public opinion, and made to render an account for their evil deeds; and let the political power and influence of the President, whose right hand signed the Bill, wilt and rot upon the body of his party. Let every officer, and every attorney, and every private citizen who shall attempt to aid or enforce the law, be looked upon with the eye of public contempt, until the blush of shame shall burn upon their cheeks, and let them and the party to which they may belong, and that shall put such craven-hearted persons in nomination, be remembered at the [b]allot box, as honest men and patriots should remember the enemies of God and their country. (p. 54)

SOURCE: The Liberator, September 27, 1850.

Opponents of slavery also looked to change the laws. If the time was not yet ripe for eliminating slavery, they wanted to protect the rights of emancipated or freeborn African Americans who might be kidnapped from states where slavery was illegal and sold into slavery in the slave states. When Governor Thomas Mifflin (1744–1800) of Pennsylvania put the question to President George Washington (1732–1799) in 1791, the president asked Congress to pass legislation dealing with it. Southerners quickly moved to protect the institution of slavery, whereas the northerners were unable to successfully mold the legislation to their liking despite holding a majority in the Senate. In his study Slavery and the Founders, Paul Finkelman (1996) suggests several reasons for the northerner's failure to form the legislation: "First, a majority of northerners were not overly concerned about slavery, even though they opposed the institution. Second, the southerners were able, even in the early 1790s, to create a united front to defend their most valuable institution. Finally, those few northerners who did oppose slavery appear to have misunderstood what was at stake." When Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law in 1793 it was not at all what the abolitionists intended.

While sections 1 and 2 dealt with criminal extradition cases, sections 3 and 4 pertained to the rendition of fugitive slaves: a slave owner or his agent would first capture an escaped slave; then the agent would bring the slave to appear before a federal, state, or local judge in the area where the slave was captured. The agent had to provide proof that the person in custody was the slave in question. This might be done verbally or through a document sworn before a magistrate in the location from which the slave had formally resided. If this proof were satisfactory, the official could issue a certificate of removal, allowing the captured slave to be transported across state lines. If anyone interfered with the legal process—sometimes antislavery advocates might kidnap a slave from a slave catcher—he or she could be sued by the owner of the slave for $500, a considerable sum at that time.

Conflict continued. Opponents of slavery continued to rally both legal (in the form of state personal liberty laws) and popular support to their cause; slaveholders sought greater protections under the law and greater facility in pursuing their claims. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 mandated that the federal courts appoint commissioners to deal with fugitive slave cases, specifically "to take acknowledgments of bail and affidavits, and to take depositions of witnesses in civil causes" (section 2). The law also mandated the use of federal marshals and deputy marshals to execute warrants, take custody of individuals, and deliver the recovered slaves to their destinations. If a marshal did not fulfill his duty, he would be fined $1000 for abetting a fugitive, imprisoned for up to six months, and perhaps sued by the slave owner for the price of the slave. Others who might impede the capture of a fugitive slave might face the same penalties.

Although President Millard Fillmore (1800–1874) signed the 1850 bill into law, he expressed reservations about it in a letter to attorney and statesman Daniel Webster (1782–1852):

[T]he law hav'g passed, must be executed. That so far as it provides for the surrender of fugitives from labor it is according to the requirements of the constitution and should be sustained against all attempts at repeal, but if there be any provision in it endangering the liberty of those who are free, it should be modified as to secure the free blacks from such an abuse of the object of the law, and that done we at the North have no just cause of complaint.

If slaveholders thought the new law would deter slaves from attempting escape, they were mistaken. Yet this was not a result of a lack of enforcement of the law, which was a misperception among some slave owners. In fact, The Raleigh Register (October 5, 1850) reported the following under the title The Fugitive Slave Law:

The first case under the new fugitive slave law came off in the city of New York yesterday, (Friday). The efficacy of the law for the purpose intended was fully apparent. No attempt was made to obstruct the officers in the discharge of their duty, nor to rescue the slave from them, as frequently happened under the old law; but the process went on with perfect quietness, and the slave was delivered to his owner, and carried off under an escort furnished by order of the Commissioner before whom the examination was held.

The federal government was upholding the law as required. According to Stanley Campbell (1970), records show that during the 1850s "the great majority of fugitive slaves claimed in federal tribunal were remanded to their owners. These slaves were returned despite hostile public opinion. In some quarters, this hostility manifested itself in violent resistance to enforcement; in other quarters it was manifested in jurisdictional disputes between state and federal courts. In only a small minority of cases were slaves rescued from federal custody."

One of these rare cases was that of Anthony Burns, a fugitive from Virginia who was working in a clothing store in Boston when he was arrested in 1884 for allegedly having robbed a jewelry store. The city officers took him bodily to the courthouse, where a U.S. marshal was waiting. Word of his arrest spread on the street and in a surprisingly short time a mob of abolitionists stormed the courthouse to free Burns. Yet they were unsuccessful: Burns was tried for being a fugitive slave, with the lawyer defending him using charges of an illegal arrest as a defense. In the end, Burns was remanded to his Virginia owners, but not before federal troops were called out to maintain the peace as Burns was escorted shipboard for his return into slavery.