Fugitive slave laws in the United States
[1] 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.
[6] Serious attempts at formulating a uniform policy for the capture of escaped slaves began under the Articles of Confederation of the United States in 1785.
[10] 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.
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.
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.
[18] The supposed justification for the disparity in compensation was that, if the decision were in favor of the claimant, additional effort on the part of the commissioner would be required in order to fill out the paperwork actually remanding the slave back to the South.
The severity of this measure led to gross abuses and defeated its purpose; the number of abolitionists increased, the operations of the Underground Railroad became more efficient, and new personal liberty laws were enacted in Vermont (1850), Connecticut (1854), Rhode Island (1854), Massachusetts (1855), Michigan (1855), Maine (1855 and 1857), Kansas (1858) and Wisconsin (1858).
The personal liberty laws forbade justices and judges to take cognizance of claims, extended habeas corpus and the privilege of jury trial to fugitives, and punished false testimony severely.
[citation needed] The arrests of Thomas Sims and of Shadrach Minkins in Boston in 1851; of Jerry M. Henry, in Syracuse, New York, in the same year; of Anthony Burns in 1854, in Boston; and of the Garner family in 1856, in Cincinnati, with other cases arising under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, probably had as much to do with bringing on the Civil War as did the controversy over slavery in the Territories.
Major General Benjamin Franklin Butler, in May 1861, declared that Confederate slaves used for military purposes such as building fortifications were contraband of war.
The Confiscation Act of 1861 was passed in August 1861, and discharged from service or labor any slave employed in aiding or promoting any insurrection against the government of the United States.
