Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

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Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
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Long titleAn Act to amend, and supplementary to, the Act entitled "An Act respecting Fugitives from Justice, and Persons escaping from the Service of their Masters", approved February twelfth, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three.
Enacted bythe 31st United States Congress
Citations
Public law Pub. L.   31–60
Statutes at Large 9  Stat.   462
Legislative history
Major amendments
Repealed by Act of June 28, 1864, 13  Stat.   200
An April 24, 1851 poster warning the "colored people of Boston" about policemen acting as slave catchers. Slave kidnap post 1851 boston.jpg
An April 24, 1851 poster warning the "colored people of Boston" about policemen acting as slave catchers.

The Fugitive Slave Act or Fugitive Slave Law was a law passed by the 31st United States Congress on September 18, 1850, [1] as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern interests in slavery and Northern Free-Soilers.

Contents

The Act was one of the most controversial elements of the 1850 compromise and heightened Northern fears of a slave power conspiracy. It required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be returned to the enslaver and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate. [2] The Act contributed to the growing polarization of the country over the issue of slavery. It was one of the factors that led to the American Civil War.[ citation needed ]

Background

Events leading to the American Civil War
  1. Northwest Ordinance
  2. Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions
  3. End of Atlantic slave trade
  4. Missouri Compromise
  5. Tariff of 1828
  6. Nat Turner's Rebellion
  7. Nullification crisis
  8. End of slavery in British colonies
  9. Texas Revolution
  10. United States v. Crandall
  11. Gag rule
  12. Commonwealth v. Aves
  13. Murder of Elijah Lovejoy
  14. Burning of Pennsylvania Hall
  15. American Slavery As It Is
  16. United States v. The Amistad
  17. Prigg v. Pennsylvania
  18. Texas annexation
  19. Mexican–American War
  20. Wilmot Proviso
  21. Nashville Convention
  22. Compromise of 1850
  23. Uncle Tom's Cabin
  24. Recapture of Anthony Burns
  25. Kansas–Nebraska Act
  26. Ostend Manifesto
  27. Bleeding Kansas
  28. Caning of Charles Sumner
  29. Dred Scott v. Sandford
  30. The Impending Crisis of the South
  31. Panic of 1857
  32. Lincoln–Douglas debates
  33. Oberlin–Wellington Rescue
  34. John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry
  35. Virginia v. John Brown
  36. 1860 presidential election
  37. Crittenden Compromise
  38. Secession of Southern states
  39. Peace Conference of 1861
  40. Corwin Amendment
  41. Battle of Fort Sumter

By 1843, several hundred enslaved people a year escaped to the North successfully, making slavery an unstable institution in the border states. [2] [ page needed ]

The earlier Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was a Federal law that was written with the intent to enforce Article 4, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution, which required the return of escaped slaves. It sought to force the authorities in free states to return fugitives of enslavement to their enslavers.

Many free states wanted to disregard the Fugitive Slave Act. Some jurisdictions passed personal liberty laws, mandating a jury trial before alleged fugitive slaves could be moved; others forbade the use of local jails or the assistance of state officials in arresting or returning alleged fugitive slaves. In some cases, juries refused to convict individuals who had been indicted under the Federal law. [3]

The Missouri Supreme Court routinely held, with the laws of neighboring free states, that enslaved people whom their enslavers had voluntarily transported into free states, with the intent of the enslavers' residing there permanently or indefinitely, gained their freedom as a result. [4] The 1793 act dealt with enslaved people who escaped to free states without their enslavers' consent. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled, in Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842), that states did not have to offer aid in the hunting or recapture of enslaved people, significantly weakening the law of 1793.

After 1840, the Black population of Cass County, Michigan proliferated as families were attracted by White defiance of discriminatory laws, by numerous highly supportive Quakers, and by low-priced land. Free and escaping Blacks found Cass County a haven. Their good fortune attracted the attention of Southern slavers. In 1847 and 1849, planters from Bourbon and Boone counties, Kentucky, led raids into Cass County to recapture people escaping slavery. The attacks failed, but the situation contributed to Southern demands in 1850 to pass a strengthened fugitive slave act. [5]

Southern politicians often exaggerated the number of people escaping enslavement, blaming the escapes on Northern abolitionists, whom they saw as stirring up their allegedly happy slaves, interfering with "Southern property rights". According to the Columbus [Georgia] Enquirer of 1850, The support from Northerners for fugitive slaves caused more ill will between the North and the South than all the other causes put together. [6] : 6 

New law

Print by E. W. Clay, an artist who published many proslavery cartoons, supports the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. In the cartoon, a Southerner mocks a Northerner who claims his goods, several bolts of fabric, have been stolen. "They are fugitives from you, are they?" asks the slaver. Adopting the rhetoric of abolitionists, he continues, "As to the law of the land, I have a higher law of my own, and possession is nine points in the law." Cartoon Supporting the Fugitive Slave Act (1851).jpg
Print by E. W. Clay, an artist who published many proslavery cartoons, supports the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. In the cartoon, a Southerner mocks a Northerner who claims his goods, several bolts of fabric, have been stolen. "They are fugitives from you, are they?" asks the slaver. Adopting the rhetoric of abolitionists, he continues, "As to the law of the land, I have a higher law of my own, and possession is nine points in the law."

In response to the weakening of the original Fugitive Slave Act, Democratic Senator James M. Mason of Virginia drafted the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which penalized officials who did not arrest someone allegedly escaping from slavery, and made them liable to a fine of $1,000 (equivalent to $36,620in 2023). Law enforcement officials everywhere were required to arrest people suspected of escaping enslavement on as little as a claimant's sworn testimony of ownership. Habeas corpus was declared irrelevant. The Commissioner before whom the fugitive from slavery was brought for a hearing—no jury was permitted, and the alleged refugee from enslavement could not testify [7] —was compensated $10 (equivalent to $370in 2023) if he found that the individual was proven a fugitive and only $5 (equivalent to $180in 2023) if he determined the proof to be insufficient. [8] In addition, any person aiding a fugitive by providing food or shelter was subject to up to six months of imprisonment and up to $1,000 in fine. Officers who captured a fugitive from slavery were entitled to a bonus or promotion for their work.

Enslavers needed only to supply an affidavit to a Federal marshal to capture a fugitive from slavery. Since a suspected enslaved person was not eligible for a trial, the law resulted in the kidnapping and conscription of free Blacks into slavery, as purported fugitive slaves had no rights in court and could not defend themselves against accusations. [9]

The Act adversely affected the prospects of escape from slavery, particularly in states close to the North. One study finds that while prices placed on enslaved people rose across the Southern United States in the years after 1850, it appears that "the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act increased prices in border states by 15% to 30% more than in states further south", illustrating how the Act altered the chance of successful escape. [10]

According to abolitionist John Brown, even in the supposedly safe refuge of Springfield, Massachusetts, "some of them are so alarmed that they tell me that they cannot sleep on account of either them or their wives and children. I can only say I think I have been enabled to do something to revive their broken spirits. I want all my family to imagine themselves in the same dreadful condition." [11]

Judicial nullification

In 1855, 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. In 1859 in Ableman v. Booth, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the state court. [12]

Jury nullification occurred as local Northern juries acquitted men accused of violating the law. Secretary of State Daniel Webster was a key supporter of the law, as expressed in his famous "Seventh of March" speech. He wanted high-profile convictions. The jury nullifications ruined his presidential aspirations and his last-ditch efforts to find a compromise between North and South. Webster led the prosecution against men accused of rescuing Shadrach Minkins in 1851 from Boston officials who intended to return Minkins to slavery; the juries convicted none of the men. Webster sought to enforce a law that was extremely unpopular in the Northern United States, and his Whig Party passed him over again when they chose a presidential nominee in 1852. [13]

Legislative nullification

In November 1850, the Vermont legislature passed the Habeas Corpus Law, requiring Vermont judicial and law enforcement officials to assist captured fugitive slaves. It also established a state judicial process, parallel to the federal process, for people accused of being fugitive slaves. This law rendered the federal Fugitive Slave Act effectively unenforceable in Vermont and caused a storm of controversy nationally. It was considered a nullification of federal law, a concept popular among slave states that wanted to nullify other aspects of federal law, and was part of highly charged debates over slavery. Noted poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier had called for such laws, and the Whittier controversy heightened pro-slavery reactions to the Vermont law. Virginia governor John B. Floyd warned that nullification could push the South toward secession. At the same time, President Millard Fillmore threatened to use the army to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act in Vermont. No test events took place in Vermont, but the rhetoric of this flare-up echoed South Carolina's 1832 nullification crisis and Thomas Jefferson's 1798 Kentucky Resolutions. [14]

In February 1855, Michigan's legislature also passed a law prohibiting county jails from being used to detain recaptured slaves, directing county prosecutors to defend recaptured slaves, and entitling recaptured slaves to habeas corpus and trial by jury. [15] Other states to pass personal liberty laws include Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Resistance in the North and other consequences

The Fugitive Slave Law brought the issue home to anti-slavery citizens in the North, as it made them and their institutions responsible for enforcing slavery. "Where before many in the North had little or no opinions or feelings on slavery, this law seemed to demand their direct assent to the practice of human bondage, and it galvanized Northern sentiments against slavery." [16] Moderate abolitionists were faced with the immediate choice of defying what they believed to be an unjust law or breaking with their consciences and beliefs. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) in response to the law. [17] : 1  [18] [19]

Many abolitionists openly defied the law. 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 in Onondaga County to level it to the ground before the next morning. [20]

Several years before, in the Jerry Rescue, Syracuse abolitionists freed by force a fugitive slave who was to be sent back to the South and successfully smuggled him to Canada. [21] Thomas Sims and Anthony Burns were both captured fugitives who were part of unsuccessful attempts by opponents of the Fugitive Slave Law to use force to free them. [22] Other famous examples include Shadrach Minkins in 1851 and Lucy Bagby in 1861, whose forcible return has been cited by historians as important and "allegorical". [23] Pittsburgh abolitionists organized groups whose purpose was the seizure and release of any enslaved person passing through the city, as in the case of a free Black servant of the Slaymaker family, erroneously the subject of a rescue by Black waiters in a hotel dining room. [7] If fugitives from slavery were captured and put on trial, abolitionists worked to defend them in trial, and if by chance the recaptured person had their freedom put up for a price, abolitionists worked to pay to free them. [24] Other opponents, such as African-American leader Harriet Tubman, treated the law as just another complication in their activities.

In April 1859, a putative freeman named Daniel Webster was arrested in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, alleged to be Daniel Dangerfield, an escaped slave from Loudoun County, Virginia. At a hearing in Philadelphia, federal commissioner J. Cooke Longstreth ordered Webster's release, arguing the claimants had not proved that he was Dangerfield. Webster promptly left for Canada. [25] [26] [27] [28]

Canada

One important consequence was that Canada, not the Northern free states, became the foremost destination for escaped slaves. The Black population of Canada increased from 40,000 to 60,000 between 1850 and 1860, and many reached freedom by the Underground Railroad. [29] Notable Black publishers, such as Henry Bibb and Mary Ann Shadd, created publications encouraging emigration to Canada. By 1855, an estimated 3,500 people among Canada's Black population were fugitives from American slavery. [24] In Pittsburgh, for example, during the September following the passage of the law, organized groups of escaped slaves, armed and sworn to "die rather than be taken back into slavery", set out for Canada, with more than 200 men leaving by the end of the month. [7] The Black population in New York City dropped by almost 2,000 from 1850 to 1855. [24]

On the other hand, many Northern businessmen supported the law due to their commercial ties with the Southern states. They founded the Union Safety Committee and raised thousands of dollars to promote their cause, which gained sway, particularly in New York City, and caused public opinion to shift somewhat towards supporting the law. [24]

End of the Act

The Vicksburg Whig did not cite any sources for these claims about the number of fugitives from American slavery ("Slaves Escaping from the South", January 16, 1861) Slaves Escaping from the South.jpg
The Vicksburg Whig did not cite any sources for these claims about the number of fugitives from American slavery ("Slaves Escaping from the South", January 16, 1861)

In the early stages of the American Civil War, the Union had no established policy on people escaping from slavery. Many enslaved people left their plantations heading for Union lines. Still, in the early stages of the war, fugitives from slavery were often returned by Union forces to their enslavers. [30] General Benjamin Butler and some other Union generals, however, refused to recapture fugitives under the law because the Union and the Confederacy were at war. He confiscated enslaved people as contraband of war and set them free, with the justification that the loss of labor would also damage the Confederacy. [31] Lincoln allowed Butler to continue his policy but countermanded broader directives issued by other Union commanders that freed all enslaved people in places under their control. [30]

In August 1861, the U.S. Congress enacted the Confiscation Act of 1861, which barred enslavers from re-enslaving captured fugitives who were forced to aid or abet the insurrection. [30] The legislation, sponsored by Lyman Trumbull, was passed on a near-unanimous vote and established military emancipation as official Union policy, but applied only to enslaved people used by rebel enslavers to support the Confederate cause, creating a limited exception to the Fugitive Slave Act. [32] Union Army forces sometimes returned fugitives from slavery to enslavers until March 1862, when Congress enacted the Confiscation Act of 1862, Section 10 of which barred Union officers from returning slaves to their owners on pain of dismissal from the service. [30] [32] James Mitchell Ashley proposed legislation to repeal the Fugitive Slave Act, but the bill did not make it out of committee in 1863. [32] Although the Union policy of confiscation and military emancipation had effectively superseded the operation of the Fugitive Slave Act, [32] [33] the Fugitive Slave Act was only formally repealed in June 1864. [33] The New York Tribune hailed the repeal, writing: "The blood-red stain that has blotted the statute-book of the Republic is wiped out forever." [33]

See also

James Hamlet, the first man re-enslaved under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, in front of New York City Hall. The banner on the right reads: "A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty is worth an age of servitude". The Fugitive Slave Law....Hamlet in Chains.jpg
James Hamlet, the first man re-enslaved under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, in front of New York City Hall. The banner on the right reads: "A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty is worth an age of servitude".

Incidents involving the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (in chronological order)

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Underground Railroad</span> Network for fugitive slaves in 19th-century U.S.

The Underground Railroad was used by freedom seekers from slavery in the United States and was generally an organized network of secret routes and safe houses. Enslaved Africans and African Americans escaped from slavery as early as the 16th century and many of their escapes were unaided, but the network of safe houses operated by agents generally known as the Underground Railroad began to organize in the 1780s among Abolitionist Societies in the North. It ran north and grew steadily until the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln. The escapees sought primarily to escape into free states, and from there to Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Compromise of 1850</span> American political compromise

The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850 that temporarily defused tensions between slave and free states in the years leading up to the American Civil War. Designed by Whig senator Henry Clay and Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas, with the support of President Millard Fillmore, the compromise centered on how to handle slavery in recently acquired territories from the Mexican–American War (1846–48).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slave states and free states</span> Historical division of United States by legality of slavery

In the United States before 1865, a slave state was a state in which slavery and the internal or domestic slave trade were legal, while a free state was one in which they were prohibited. Between 1812 and 1850, it was considered by the slave states to be politically imperative that the number of free states not exceed the number of slave states, so new states were admitted in slave–free pairs. There were, nonetheless, some slaves in most free states up to the 1840 census, and the Fugitive Slave Clause of the U.S. Constitution, as implemented by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, provided that a slave did not become free by entering a free state and must be returned to their owner. Enforcement of these laws became one of the controversies which arose between slave and free states.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fugitive Slave Act of 1793</span> Act of the United States Congress

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was an Act of the United States Congress to give effect to the Fugitive Slave Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which was later superseded by the Thirteenth Amendment, and to also give effect to the Extradition Clause. The Constitution's Fugitive Slave Clause guaranteed a right for a slaveholder to recover an escaped slave. The subsequent Act, "An Act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters", created the legal mechanism by which that could be accomplished.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fugitive slaves in the United States</span>

In the United States, fugitive slaves or runaway slaves were terms used in the 18th and 19th centuries to describe people who fled slavery. The term also refers to the federal Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850. Such people are also called freedom seekers to avoid implying that the enslaved person had committed a crime and that the slaveholder was the injured party.

Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 41 U.S. 539 (1842), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 precluded a Pennsylvania state law that prohibited Blacks from being taken out of the free state of Pennsylvania into slavery. The Court overturned the conviction of slavecatcher Edward Prigg as a result.

In the context of slavery in the United States, the personal liberty laws were laws passed by several U.S. states in the North to counter the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850. Different laws did this in different ways, including allowing jury trials for escaped slaves and forbidding state authorities from cooperating in their capture and return. States with personal liberty laws included Connecticut, Massachusetts, Michigan, Maine, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Vermont.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fugitive slave laws in the United States</span> Laws passed by the United States Congress in 1793 and 1850

The fugitive slave laws were laws passed by the United States Congress in 1793 and 1850 to provide for the return of slaves who escaped from one state into another state or territory. The idea of the fugitive slave law was derived from the Fugitive Slave Clause which is in the United States Constitution. It was thought that forcing states to return fugitive slaves to their masters 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 fugitive slaves "shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due", which abridged state rights because apprehending runaway slaves was a form of retrieving private property. The Compromise of 1850 entailed a series of laws that allowed slavery in the new territories and forced officials in free states to give a hearing to slave-owners without a jury.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oberlin–Wellington Rescue</span> 1858 event in leadup to American Civil War

The Oberlin–Wellington Rescue of 1858 in was a key event in the history of abolitionism in the United States. A cause celèbre and widely publicized, thanks in part to the new telegraph, it is one of the series of events leading up to Civil War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Sims</span> American who escaped slavery but was reenslaved by law

Thomas Sims was an African American who escaped from slavery in Georgia and fled to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1851. He was arrested the same year under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, had a court hearing, and was forced to return to enslavement. A second escape brought him back to Boston in 1863, where he was later appointed to a position in the U.S. Department of Justice in 1877. Sims was one of the first slaves to be forcibly returned from Boston under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The failure to stop his case from progressing was a significant blow to the abolitionists, as it showed the extent of the power and influence which slavery had on American society and politics. The case was one of many events leading to the American Civil War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slave catcher</span> People who tracked down escaped slaves in the United States

A slave catcher is a person employed to track down and return escaped slaves to their enslavers. The first slave catchers in the Americas were active in European colonies in the West Indies during the sixteenth century. In colonial Virginia and Carolina, slave catchers were recruited by Southern planters beginning in the eighteenth century to return fugitive slaves; the concept quickly spread to the rest of the Thirteen Colonies. After the establishment of the United States, slave catchers continued to be employed in addition to being active in other countries which had not abolished slavery, such as Brazil. The activities of slave catchers from the American South became at the center of a major controversy in the lead up to the American Civil War; the Fugitive Slave Act required those living in the Northern United States to assist slave catchers. Slave catchers in the United States ceased to be active with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lewis Hayden</span> American abolitionist, lecturer, businessman and politician (1811-1889)

Lewis Hayden escaped slavery in Kentucky with his family and reached Canada. He established a school for African Americans before moving to Boston, Massachusetts. There he became an abolitionist, lecturer, businessman, and politician. Before the American Civil War, he and his wife Harriet Hayden aided numerous fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad, often sheltering them at their house.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shadrach Minkins</span> American slave

Shadrach Minkins was an African-American fugitive slave from Virginia who escaped in 1850 and reached Boston. He also used the pseudonyms Frederick Wilkins and Frederick Jenkins. He is known for being freed from a courtroom in Boston after being captured by United States marshals under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Members of the Boston Vigilance Committee freed and hid him, helping him get to Canada via the Underground Railroad. Minkins settled in Montreal, where he raised a family. Two men were prosecuted in Boston for helping free him, but they were acquitted by the jury.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boston Vigilance Committee</span> US abolitionist organization

The Boston Vigilance Committee (1841–1861) was an abolitionist organization formed in Boston, Massachusetts, to protect escaped slaves from being kidnapped and returned to slavery in the South. The Committee aided hundreds of escapees, most of whom arrived as stowaways on coastal trading vessels and stayed a short time before moving on to Canada or England. Notably, members of the Committee provided legal and other aid to George Latimer, Ellen and William Craft, Shadrach Minkins, Thomas Sims, and Anthony Burns.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Morris (lawyer)</span> American lawyer

Robert Morris was one of the first African-American attorneys in the United States, and was called "the first really successful colored lawyer in America."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Latimer (escaped slave)</span> American escaped enslaved person

George Washington Latimer was an escaped slave whose case became a major political issue in Massachusetts.

Nathaniel Booth was an African American who escaped from slavery.

<i>Commonwealth v. Aves</i> 1836 freedom suit in Massachusetts

Commonwealth v. Aves, 35 Mass. 193 (1836), was a case in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on the subject of transportation of slaves to free states. In August 1836, Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw ruled that slaves brought to Massachusetts "for any temporary purpose of business or pleasure" were entitled to freedom. The case was the most important legal victory for abolitionists in the 1830s and set a major precedent throughout the North.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christiana Riot</span> 1851 armed resistance by free Blacks and escaped slaves

The Christiana Riot, also known as Christiana Resistance, Christiana Tragedy, or Christiana incident, was the successful armed resistance by free Blacks and escaped slaves to a raid led by a federal marshal to recover four escaped slaves owned by Edward Gorsuch of Maryland. The raid took place in the early morning hours of September 11, 1851, at the house in Christiana, Pennsylvania, of William Parker, himself an escaped slave. This took place after the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 increased penalties for assisting escaped slaves and required state government officials, even in free states such as Pennsylvania, to assist in the recapture of slaves.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Underground Railroad in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania</span>

The Underground Railroad in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania was a critical hub of the American Underground Railroad network, which helped men, women and children to escape the system of chattel slavery that existed in the United States during the nineteenth century.

References

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  2. 1 2 Nevins, Allan (1947). Ordeal of the Union: Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847–1852. Vol. 1. Collier Books. ISBN   978-0020354413.
  3. ↑ Thomas D. Morris (1974). Free Men All: The Personal Liberty Laws of the North, 1780–1861. The Lawbook Exchange. p. 49. ISBN   9781584771074.
  4. ↑ Stampp, Kenneth M. (1990). America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink. Oxford University Press. p. 84. Missouri courts on a number of occasions had granted freedom to slaves whose owners had taken them for long periods of residence in free states or territories
  5. ↑ Wilson, Benjamin C. (1976). "Kentucky Kidnappers, Fugitives, and Abolitionists in Antebellum Cass County Michigan". Michigan History . 60 (4): 339–358.
  6. ↑ Humphreys, Hugh C. (1994). "'Agitate! Agitate! Agitate!' The Great Fugitive Slave Law Convention and its rare Daguerrotype". Madison County Heritage (19): 3–66.
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  8. ↑ "The Fugitive Slave Law". Sabbath Recorder. (Transcribed in Marlene K. Parks, ed., New York Central College, 1849–1860, 2017, ISBN 1548505757, Volume 1, Part 3). October 10, 1850.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
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  14. ↑ Houston, Horace K. Jr. (2004). "Another Nullification Crisis: Vermont's 1850 Habeas Corpus Law". New England Quarterly. 77 (2): 252–272. JSTOR   1559746.
  15. ↑ The Protection of the Rights and Liberties of Persons Claimed as Fugitive Slaves: An Act to protect the rights and liberties of the inhabitants of this State (Act, Title XXXVIII, Chapter CCXLI). Michigan Legislature. February 13, 1855.
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  22. ↑ "Anthony Burns captured". Africans in America. pbs.org. 2011. Retrieved June 28, 2011.
  23. ↑ Robbins, Hollis (June 12, 2011). "Whitewashing Civil War History". The Root. Archived from the original on February 9, 2012. Retrieved February 11, 2012.
  24. 1 2 3 4 Foner, Eric (January 18, 2016). Gateway to Freedom. pp. 126–150. ISBN   978-0-393-35219-1.
  25. ↑ "Daniel Webster". Digital Harrisburg. October 28, 2020. Retrieved February 18, 2022.
  26. ↑ "J. Cooke Longstreth | 1850 Fugitive Slave Law" . Retrieved February 18, 2022.
  27. ↑ The arrest, trial, and release of Daniel Webster, a fugitive slave : correspondence of the Anti-slavery standard. 1859. Retrieved February 18, 2022.
  28. ↑ "Daniel Dangerfield's Flight to Freedom Hailed for Lasting Lessons". Loudoun Now. February 2, 2021. Retrieved February 18, 2022.
  29. ↑ Landon, Fred (1920). "The Negro migration to Canada after the passing of the fugitive slave act". The Journal of Negro History. 5 (1): 22–36. doi: 10.2307/2713499 . JSTOR   2713499. Open Access logo PLoS transparent.svg
  30. 1 2 3 4 Noralee Frankel, "Breaking the Chain: 1860–1880", in Robin D. G. Kelley & Earl Lewis (eds), To Make Our World Anew (Vol. I: A History of African Americans to 1880, Oxford University Press, 2000: paperback edn 2005), pp. 230–231.
  31. ↑ Goodheart, Adam (April 1, 2011). "How Slavery Really Ended in America". The New York Times .
  32. 1 2 3 4 Rebecca E. Zietlow, The Forgotten Emancipator: James Mitchell Ashley and the Ideological Origins of Reconstruction (Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 97–98.
  33. 1 2 3 Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government's Relations to Slavery (Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 250.
  34. ↑ Tappan, Lewis (1850). The Fugitive slave bill : its history and unconstitutionality : with an account of the seizure and enslavement of James Hamlet, and his subsequent restoration to liberty. New York: William Harned.
  35. ↑ Wolfe, Brendan (December 22, 2021). "Minkins, Shadrach (d. 1875) Virginia". Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities. Retrieved August 8, 2021.

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