FUGITIVE SLAVE LAWS, a term applied in the United States to the statutes passed by Congress in 1793 and 1850 to provide for the return of negro slaves who escaped from one State into another or into a public territory.
The first specific legislation on the subject was enacted on Feb. I, 1793; by its provisions any Federal district or circuit judge or any State magistrate was authorized to decide finally and without a jury trial the status of an alleged fugitive. The measure soon met with strong opposition in the northern States, and Personal Liberty laws were passed to hamper officials in the execution of the law; Indiana in 1824 and Connecticut in 1828 providing jury trial for fugitives who appealed from an original decision against them. In 1840 New York and Vermont extended the right of trial by jury to fugitives and provided them with attorneys. 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 negroes escaping from the South to Canada or New England—the so-called "Underground Railroad" (q.v.). The decision of the Su preme Court of the United States in 1842 that State authorities could not be forced to act in fugitive slave cases, but that national authorities must carry out the national law, was followed by legis lation in Massachusetts (1843), Vermont (1843), Pennsylvania (184 7) and Rhode Island (1848), forbidding State officials to help enforce the law and refusing the use of State gaols for fugitive slaves.
The demand from the South for more effective Federal legisla tion was voiced in the second Fugitive Slave Law, enacted on Sept. 18, 185o, as a part of the Compromise measures of that year. Spe cial commissioners were to have concurrent jurisdiction with the U S. courts in enforcing the law; fugitives could not testify in their own behalf ; no trial by jury was provided; penalties were imposed upon marshals who refused to enforce the law or from whom a fugitive should escape, and upon individuals who aided negroes to escape; the marshal might raise a posse comitatus; a fee of $10 was paid to the commissioner when his decision favoured the claimant and only $5 when it favoured the fugitive; and both the fact of the escape and the identity of the fugitive were to be de termined on purely ex parte testimony. The severity of this meas ure 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 (185o), Connecticut (1854), Rhode Island Massachusetts (1855), Michigan (1855), Maine (1855 and 1857), Kansas (1858) and Wisconsin (1858). These Personal Liberty laws forbade justices and judges to take cognizance of claims, ex tended the habeas corpus act and the privilege of jury trial to fugitives, and punished false testimony severely. These State laws were one of the grievances officially referred to by South Carolina (in Dec. 186o) as justifying her secession from the Union. At tempts to carry into effect the law of 185o aroused much bitter ness. The arrests of Sims and of Shadrach in Boston in 1851; of "Jerry" M`Henry, in Syracuse,N.Y., in the same year; of Anthony Burns in 1854, in Boston; and of the two Garner families in 1856, in Cincinnati, with other cases arising under the Fugitive Slave Law of 185o, probably had as much to do with bringing on the Civil War as did the controversy over slavery in the Territories.
For some time after the beginning of the Civil War the Fugitive Slave Law was considered still to hold in the case of fugitives from masters in the border states who were loyal to the Union government, and it was not until June 28, 1864 that the Act of I 5o was repealed.
See J. F. Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850, vols. i. and ii. (1893) ; and M. G. M`Dougall, Fugitive Slaves, 1619-1865 (Boston, 5890.