Home > Fugitive Slave Law of 1850

A major cause of conflict between the Southern slave states and the Northern free states was the lack of assistance given by northerners to southern slave-owners and their agents seeking to recapture escaped slaves. (See Underground railroad.) In 1842 the Supreme Court had ruled that states did not have to proffer aid in the hunting or recapture of slaves, and in some areas locals had actively fought attempts to seize black fugitives and return them to the South. Some northern states passed personal-liberty laws mandating a jury trial before alleged slaves could be moved, others forbade the use of local jails or the assistance of state officials in the process of arrest or return.

In response, the Fugitive Slave Bill 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 in the United States 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 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.

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 conscience and belief.

Many Methodists were highly active in the abolition movement, though the Methodist Episcopal Church was officially hesitant to speak out for fear of losing the southern churches. Their reluctance stimulated at least two splinter groups of Methodism, the Wesleyan Methodist Church (America) in 1843 and the Free MethodistsThe Free Methodist Church is a denomination of Methodism, which is a branch of Protestantism. It was founded in 1860 in New York's Burned-over district by a group, led by B. Roberts, who was defrocked in the Methodist Episcopal Church for criticisms of th in 1860. These, along with some like-minded Quakers, maintained many of the "stations" of the Underground Railroad.

The Fugitive Slave Act brought a defiant response from the "station masters." Rev. Luther Lee , pastor of the Wesleyan Methodist Church of Syracuse, New YorkClinton Square in Downtown Syracuse Syracuse is a city located in Onondaga County, New York, USA. As of the 2000 U. Census, the city had a total population of 147,306, and its metropolitan area had a population of 732,117. It is the county seat of Onondag wrote in 1855Events Births January 5 King Camp Gillette, inventor († 1932) January 21 John Moses Browning, inventor († 1926) January 28 William Seward Burroughs, inventor of the calculator († 1898) March 13 Percival Lowell, astronomer († 19:

I never would obey it. I had assisted thirty slaves to escape to Canada during the last month. If the authorities wanted any thing 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.

Other participants in the resistance movementA resistance movement is a group dedicated to fighting an invader in an occupied country. The term can also refer to any organized effort by supporters of a common goal against a constituted authority. Thus resistance movements can include any irregular a, such as Harriet TubmanHarriet Tubman ( 1820 in Dorchester County, Maryland March 10, 1913 in Auburn, New York), also known as Black Moses was an African-American freedom fighter. An escaped slave, she worked as a guerrilla, farmhand, lumberjack, laundress and cook, refugee org simply treated the law as just another complication in their activities. The most important reaction was making the neighbouring country of CanadaCanada historically the Dominion of Canada is the second-largest, and northernmost, country in the world. It is a decentralized federation of 10 provinces and 3 territories, governed as a constitutional monarchy, and formed in 1867 through an act of Confe the main destination of choice for runaway slaves.

With the outbreak of the American Civil WarThe American Civil War was fought in the United States from 1861 until 1865 between the northern states, popularly referred to as "the U. the Union," " the North," or "the Yankees"; and the seceding southern states, commonly referred to as "the Confederat, General Butler justified refusing to return runaway slaves in accordance to this law as since the citizens of the seceeding states claim to be another country, then logically, American laws were no longer applicable to them.

As the war progressed, the Fugitive Slave Law declined in usage until the passage of the Thirteenth AmendmentAmendment XIII (the Thirteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution states: Section 1 Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States made it irrelevent.