FUGITIVE SLAVE ACTS

FUGITIVE SLAVE ACTS. In 1793, Congress passed an act to implement the provision in the U.S. Constitution (Article IV, Section 2) stating that "fugitives from labour" should be returned "on demand" to the person to whom they owed "service or labour." The 1793 law allowed a master to bring an alleged fugitive slave before any state or federal judge or magistrate for a summary hearing to determine if the person seized was the claim-ant's runaway slave. The judge could accept any evidence he found persuasive on the status of the alleged slave. He could then issue a certificate of removal, allowing the claimant to take the slave back to his home state. The law provided a $500 fine for anyone interfering with the return of a fugitive slave. In addition, a master could sue anyone helping his slave for his costs plus the actual value of any slaves actually lost.

These liberal rules, as well as blatant kidnapping of free blacks, led northern states to pass personal liberty acts to protect their black residents from illegitimate removal. In the Supreme Court case of PRIGG V. COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA (1842) Justice Joseph Story, speaking for an 8–1 majority, upheld the 1793 law, struck down all state laws that interfered with the return of a fugitive slaves, and declared that slave owners had a common law right of recaption to remove any slave without any judicial hearing, if this seizure could be accomplished without any breach of the peace. Meanwhile, in JONES V. VAN ZANDT (1847), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a harsh interpretation of the 1793 law, which in effect applied to the north the southern legal presumption that all blacks were slaves until it could be proved otherwise.

Unable to protect their black residents, many free states passed new personal liberty laws withdrawing state support for enforcement of the 1793 law. Without state aid, slave owners had to rely on the tiny number of federal judges and marshals to aid them in their quest for runaway slaves.

In the wake of these new laws southerners demanded stronger federal enforcement, which led to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Technically an amendment of the 1793 law, the 1850 law was in reality an entirely new approach to the problem. The 1850 law allowed for the appointment of federal commissioners throughout the nation. These commissioners would hear fugitive slave cases and were empowered to call out federal marshals, posses, or the military to aid masters in recovering runaways. Penalties for violating the law included a __BODY__,000 fine and a six-month jail sentence. In addition, anyone helping a fugitive slave could be sued for a __BODY__,000 penalty to compensate the master for the loss of the slave.

Hearings before the commissioners were summary affairs, with no jury present. The alleged slave was denied access to the writ of habeas corpus and could not testify at the hearing. A U.S. Commissioner hearing the case would get $5 if he decided in favor of the alleged slave, but if he held for the master he would get $10. This disparity was in theory designed to compensate commissioners for the extra work of filling out certificates of removal, but to most northerners it seemed a blatant attempt to help slavery at the expense of justice.

The law led to riots, rescues, and resistance in a number of places. In 1851 a mob stormed a courtroom in Boston to free the slave Shadrach; in Syracuse a mob rescued the slave Jerry from a jail; and in Christiana, Pennsylvania, a master was killed in a shootout with fugitive slaves. In 1854, Milwaukee citizens led by the abolitionist editor Sherman Booth freed the slave Joshua Glover from federal custody, and, in 1858, most of the students and faculty of OBERLIN COLLEGE charged a courthouse and freed a slave arrested in Wellington, Ohio. All of these cases led to prosecutions, but most were unsuccessful or led to only token penalties. In ABLEMAN V. BOOTH (1859), the U.S. Supreme Court firmly upheld the 1850 law and asserted that states could interfere with the federal courts.

In the long run, the fugitive slave laws did little to help recover runaway slaves, but they did much to under-mine the Union. Outrage over the 1850 law in the North helped create the constituency for the Republican Party and the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Meanwhile, a number of southern states cited failure to enforce the fugitive slave laws as one of their reasons for secession (1861). In 1864, the Republican-dominated Congress repealed both fugitive slave laws.

FUGITIVE SLAVE ACTS

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