Current estimates are that 150,000 slaves escaped slavery between 1830 - 1860.
1785 - the Ordinance of 1784
There were two attempts at implementing a fugitive slave law in the Congress of the Confederation in order to provide slave owners with a way of recapturing escaped slaves.
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.
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 fugitive slave 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 fugitive slave 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.
1787 - The Northwest Ordinance
Congress made a further attempt to address the concerns of slave owners over runaway slaves in 1787 by passing the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. This created the Northwest Territory (the area of future states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois). The law appeared to outlaw slavery, which would have reduced the votes of slave states in Congress, but southern representatives were concerned with economic competition from potential slaveholders in the new territory, and the effects that would have on the prices of staple crops such as tobacco. They correctly predicted that slavery would be permitted south of the Ohio River under the Southwest Ordinance of 1790, and therefore did not view this as a threat to slavery. In terms of the actual law, it did not ban slavery 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 runaway slaves:
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.
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1788 - The U.S. Constitution
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 escaped slaves to slave owners 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 escaped slaves "shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due", which abridged state rights because retrieving slaves was a form of retrieving private property
1793 - The First Fugitive Slave Act
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 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 to the satisfaction of such Judge or magistrate, either by oral testimony or affidavit [of one person] taken before and certified by a magistrate of any such State or Territory...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.
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Personal Liberty Laws
In the early 19th century, personal liberty laws were passed by states 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.
During the 1820s, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania all passed personal liberty laws designed to guarantee that free blacks would not be taken from the state and that fugitive slaves could not be removed without a fair hearing and clear evidence.
Pennsylvania Personal Liberty Laws (1788 & 1826):
On March 29, 1788, the State of Pennsylvania passed an amendment to one of its laws (An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, originally enacted March 1, 1780):
"No negro or mulatto slave... shall be removed out of this state, with the design and intention that the place of abode or residence of such slave or servant shall be thereby altered or changed."
On March 25, 1826, the State of Pennsylvania passed a further law, which stated in part:
"If any person or persons shall, from and after the passing of this act, by force and violence, take and carry away, or cause to be taken or carried away, and shall, by fraud or false pretense, seduce, or cause to be seduced, or shall attempt so to take, carry away or seduce, any negro or mulatto, from any part or parts of this commonwealth, to any other place or places whatsoever, out of this commonwealth, with a design and intention of selling and disposing of, or of causing to be sold, or of keeping and detaining, or of causing to be kept and detained, such negro or mulatto, as a slave or servant for life, or for any term whatsoever, every such person or persons, his or their aiders or abettors, shall on conviction thereof, in any court of this commonwealth having competent jurisdiction, be deemed guilty of a felony."
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.
1842 Prigg vs. Pennsylvania....
State Personal Laws were declared unconstitutional in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, in which Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story declared that under the supremacy clause the federal fugitive slave laws took precedence over state personal liberty laws, thus making the Liberty Laws unconstitutional. Yet, Story ruled that the return of fugitives was the federal government's responsibility and not the state's.
1843 - George Latimer Case (1842 - 1843)
Massachusetts (The Latimer Law) and eight other states pass personal liberty laws under which state officials are forbidden to assist in the capture of fugitive slaves.
1850 - The Second Fugitive Slave Act
The fourth statute of the Compromise of 1850, enacted September 18, 1850, is informally known as the Fugitive Slave Law or the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (It bolstered the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793). The new version of the Fugitive Slave Law:
1. required federal judicial officials in all states and federal territories, including in those states and territories in which slavery was prohibited, to actively assist with the return of escaped slaves to their masters in the states and territories permitting slavery. Any federal marshal or other official who did not arrest an alleged runaway slave was liable to a fine of $1,000.
2. Law-enforcement officials everywhere in the United States had a duty to arrest anyone suspected of being a fugitive 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. Thus, if a freedman were claimed to be an escaped slave he or she could not resist his or her return to slavery by truthfully telling his or her own actual history.
3. Any person aiding a runaway slave by providing food or shelter was to be subject to six months' imprisonment and a $1,000 fine. Officers capturing a fugitive slave were entitled to a fee for their work.
4. In addition to federal officials, the ordinary citizens of free states could be summoned to join a posse and be required to assist in the capture and/or custody and/or transportation of the alleged escaped slave.
In terms of public opinion in the North the critical provision was that ordinary citizens were required to aid slave catchers. Many northerners deeply resented this requirement that they personally aid and abet slavery.
In October, a Boston "vigilance committee" frees two fugitive slaves, Ellen and William Craft, from jail and being returned to Georgia.
1851
In February, a crowd of black and white men from the Boston Vigilance Committee in Boston frees Virginia fugitive slave Shadrach Minkins, also known as Fred Wilkins, who had been captured by U.S. Marshals and was being held in the Boston federal courthouse, and help him escape to Canada. Two of the men who aided the escape were tried and acquitted by a Boston jury. 1852 Free Soil presidential candidate John P. Hale defended the men.
In April, Thomas Sims, (at least 29) an enslaved African American from Georgia who was living in Boston for about 12 years, was captured and returned to Georgia. The government uses 300 soldiers to guard Sims with 300 soldiers to prevent local sympathizers from helping him with an escape attempt. After being sold back into slavery to an owner in Mississippi, Sims escaped again in 1863 and enlisted in the U.S.C.T. during the war. Boston. The "Sims Tragedy" was a cause célèbre in the Massachusetts abolitionist movement (see for instance, the references in Henry David Thoreau’s Slavery in Massachusetts) and drew sympathy from many northerners.
The Christiana Riot - In September 1851, free blacks confront a slave owner, his son and their allies who are trying to capture two fugitive slaves at Christiana, Pennsylvania. In the gunfight that followed, three blacks and the slave owner are killed while his son was seriously wounded.
In October, "The Jerry Rescue" - In the midst of the Liberty Party's New York State convention, several hundred black and white abolitionists free fugitive slave William "Jerry" M. Henry from the Syracuse, New York jail and allow his escape to Canada. Thirteen men are prosecuted for violating the Fugitive Slave Act. One, a black man, is found guilty.
1852
In Lemmon v. New York, a New York court frees eight slaves in transit from Virginia with their owner. We will discuss this with the Dred Scott Decision in a couple weeks.
1854
The Anthony Burns Case
Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave from Virginia, is arrested by federal agents in Boston. Radical abolitionists attack the court house and kill a deputy marshal in an unsuccessful attempt to free Burns. Thousands lined the streets of Boston, buildings were draped in black, American flags were framed in black, and a coffin with the world "Liberty" painted on it was paraded through the streets.
Ableman v. Booth I
Abolitionist editor Sherman Booth was arrested for violating the Fugitive Slave Act when he helped incite a mob to rescue an escaped slave, Joshua Glover, in Wisconsin from U.S. Marshal Stephen V. R. Ableman. Glover escaped to Canada, beyond the reach of Federal law enforcement.
Booth sought a writ of habeas corpus from a Wisconsin state judge. The Wisconsin judge granted the writ, ordering Booth released from federal custody. The US Marshal appealed to the state supreme court, which ruled the federal law unconstitutional and affirmed Booth's release. When Ableman turned to the federal courts, the Wisconsin Supreme Court refused to recognize the authority of the federal courts, again ordered Booth's release, and declared the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 unconstitutional. The Wisconsin Supreme Court thereby attempted to annul the judgment of the federal court.
1855
Pennsylvania Personal Liberty Law of 1855 forbid Pennsylvania Lawyers from representing Fugitive Slave plaintiffs and federal officers from using state jails to house runaway slaves
1856 - The Margaret Garner Case
Captured by slave catchers, runaway slave Margaret Garner kills her daughter rather than have the child go back into slavery. Her resulting trial is a media sensation. Toni Morrison's book Beloved was inspired by this event.
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| Thomas Satterwhite Noble - The Modern Media (1867) |
An Act to secure freedom and the rights of citizenship to persons in this State (New Hampshire, 1857)
An Act to prevent kidnapping (Ohio, 1857)
An Act to prevent Slaveholding and Kidnapping in Ohio (Ohio, 1857)
Of the Writ of Habeas Corpus Relative to Fugitive Slaves (Wisconsin, 1857)
An Act to secure freedom to all persons within this State (Vermont, 1858)
1858 - The Oberlin-Wellington Rescue
In September, several dozen abolitionists from Oberlin, Ohio rescue a captured fugitive slave named John Price from the federal marshal who had rescued him. They get Price safely to Canada but two rescuers are arrested and tried on federal charges. The case sustains contempt for the Fugitive Slave Act up until the Republican convention in 1860.
1859
In Ableman v. Booth, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law was constitutional and that state courts cannot overrule federal court decisions. The nullification of the Fugitive Slave Law by the Wisconsin State Supreme Court is overturned.
The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court, in a unanimous opinion written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, stated that the Wisconsin Supreme Court had effectively asserted the supremacy of state courts over federal courts in cases arising under the Constitution and laws of the United States. The Court noted that if the Wisconsin courts could annul the judgment of conviction by the federal district court in this case, then any state court could annul any conviction under federal law. The Court held that the states do not have that power.
The Court stated that in adopting the Constitution, the people granted certain powers to the federal government: "it was felt by the statesmen who framed the Constitution and by the people who adopted it that it was necessary that many of the rights of sovereignty which the States then possessed should be ceded to the General Government, and that, in the sphere of action assigned to it, it should be supreme, and strong enough to execute its own laws by its own tribunals, without interruption from a State or from State authorities." This was accomplished by adoption of the Supremacy Clause, which makes federal law the supreme law of the land: "this Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be... the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."
The Court noted that the supremacy of federal law could be effective only if the federal government were given judicial power to enforce federal law. If the interpretation of the Constitution and federal statutes were left to the states, then "conflicting decisions would unavoidably take place. . . . The Constitution and laws and treaties of the United States, and the powers granted to the Federal Government, would soon receive different interpretations in different States, and the Government of the United States would soon become one thing in one State and another thing in another. It was essential, therefore, to its very existence as a Government that it should have the power of establishing courts of justice, altogether independent of State power, to carry into effect its own laws, and that a tribunal should be established in which all cases which might arise under the Constitution and laws and treaties of the United States, whether in a State court or a court of the United States, should be finally and conclusively decided." Accordingly, said the Court, the Constitution granted this judicial power to the federal government. The Constitution provides in Article III that the judicial power in all cases arising under the Constitution or laws of the United States rests in the federal courts, and that the Supreme Court has appellate jurisdiction in all such cases.
Therefore, the Court concluded that the Constitution gives the federal courts the final authority in matters involving interpretation of the Constitution and laws of the United States. Because the Constitution grants this power to the federal courts, the state courts do not have the power to review or interfere with the judgments of federal courts in matters arising under the Constitution or laws of the United States, The Court therefore found that the power of the State of Wisconsin "is limited and restricted by the Constitution of the United States." Wisconsin did not have the power to nullify the judgment of the federal court or to hold the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional. Booth's conviction therefore was upheld.
President James Buchanan pardoned Booth in early 1861.
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