Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
[citation needed] By 1843, several hundred enslaved people a year escaped to the North successfully, making slavery an unstable institution in the border states.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.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.[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.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.This law rendered the federal Fugitive Slave Act effectively unenforceable in Vermont and caused a storm of controversy nationally.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.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.[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.[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".[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.[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.
Fugitive Slave Act of 1793An Act respecting Fugitives from Justice, and Persons escaping from the Service of their Masters31st United States CongressStatutes at LargeJames M. MasonSenate JudiciaryMillard FillmoreForced labourslaveryContemporaryChild LabourChild soldiersConscriptionForced marriageBride buyingChild marriageWife sellingForced prostitutionHuman traffickingInvoluntary servitudePeonagePenal labourContemporary Africa21st-century jihadismSexual slaveryWage slaveryHistoricalAntiquityGreeceMedieval EuropeAncillaeBlack Sea slave tradeByzantine EmpireKholopPrague slave tradeHistoryIn RussiaEmancipationThrallGenoese slave tradeVenetian slave tradeBalkan slave tradeMuslim worldSlavery in the Abbasid CaliphateSlavery in al-AndalusContract of manumissionBukhara slave tradeCrimean slave tradeKhazar slave tradeKhivan slave tradeOttoman EmpireAvret PazarlarıBarbary Coastslave tradepiratesSack of BaltimoreSlave raid of SuðuroyTurkish AbductionsConcubinageMa malakat aymanukumAbbasid haremOttoman Imperial HaremSafavid imperial haremQajar haremCariyeOdalisqueUmm al-waladCircassian slave tradeSaqalibaSlavery in the Rashidun CaliphateSlavery in the Umayyad CaliphateVolga Bulgarian slave trade21st centuryAtlantic slave tradeBristolBrazilMiddle PassageNantesNew FrancePanyarringSpanish EmpireSlave CoastThirteen coloniesGhilmanMamlukDevshirmeBlackbirdingCoolieCorvée labourField slaves in the United StatesTreatmentHouse slavesSlave marketSlave raidingWhite slaveryGalley slaveImpressmentShanghaiingSlave shipSub-Saharan AfricaTrans-Saharan slave tradeRed Sea slave tradeIndian Ocean slave tradeZanzibar slave tradeAngolaComorosEthiopiaMauritaniaNigeriaSeychellesSomaliaSomali slave tradeSouth AfricaZanzibarNorth and South AmericaPre-Columbian AmericaAmericas indigenousU.S. NativesUnited StatesField slavesfemalepartusprison labourSlave codesinterregionalThe Bahamas