Fugitive Slave Clause
The Fugitive Slave Clause was a provision in the United States Constitution that required escaped slaves to be returned to their owners, even if they had reached free states. This clause was a source of tension between Northern and Southern states and contributed to the growing divide over slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War.
4 Key excerpts on "Fugitive Slave Clause"
eBook - ePubSlavery and the Founders
Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson
- Paul Finkelman(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Most important, in 1793 Congress passed the first Fugitive Slave Law, which aided southerners hunting after their runaway human chattel. This law was a major boon to the South with no reciprocal gain for the North. In addition to the substance of the law, the adoption of the law was an important constitutional change. The Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution provided: “No person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.” 2 Arguably, this clause did not give Congress the power to pass any statute to enforce the provision, but merely admonished the states to act in a certain way. By interpreting the clause in the way it did, Congress made the Constitution even more proslavery than it perhaps was. Late in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 Pierce Butler and Charles Pinckney, both of South Carolina, proposed that a Fugitive Slave Clause be added to the provision requiring the interstate extradition of fugitives from justice. James Wilson of Pennsylvania objected to the juxtaposition because “this would oblige the Executive of the State to do it, at the public expence.” Butler discreetly “withdrew his proposition in order that some particular provision might be made apart from this article.” A day later, the Convention, without debate or formal vote, adopted the fugitive slave provision. 3 Eventually the two clauses emerged as succeeding paragraphs in Article IV, Section 2 of the Constitution. The paucity of debate over the Fugitive Slave Clause is remarkable because by the end of August 1787, when the Convention adopted the clause, slavery had emerged as one of the major stumbling blocks to a stronger union...
- Lathan A. Windley(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Further, the Clause did not provide any incentive for apprehending slaves in the way of rewards. Finally, perhaps the greatest weakness of all, which did not have to do with fugitives themselves but with the free black, was the fact that no mention was made of any protection for free blacks against being detained, captured and enslaved. Such matters were left to the discretion of Congress when it might enact a statute implementing the Constitutional provision. Obviously these flaws made little impression on the delegates in the ratification conventions of Virginia and South Carolina. Only in the South Carolina ratification convention was the clause pertaining to the return of fugitive slaves mentioned. Charles C. Pinckney, in South Carolina, noted approvingly that: We have obtained a right to recover our slaves in whatever part of America they may take refuge, which is a right we had not before. In short, considering all circumstances, we have made the best terms for the security of this species of property it was in our power to make. We would have made better if we could; but, on the whole; I do not think them bad. 11 Thus, the adoption of the Fugitive Slave Clause ended one era and began another. It ended an era in which slaveowners had only the support of local government in obtaining the return of fugitive slaves. The new era, however, also gave slaveowners constitutional support in seeking the return of their property. Notes 1 Forrest McDonald, We The People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 71–75, 79082. 2 For George Washington’s advertisement, see Annapolis Maryland Gazette, August 20, 1761; James Madison, Virginia Gazette, or American Advertiser (Hayes), November 22, 1786; Charles Pinckney, Charleston South Carolina Gazette. From July 15th, to July 22d, 1751. 3 Autographed Letter signed, from Pierce Butler and Ralph Izard, September 8, 1789 (MSS)...
eBook - ePubRevolutions and Reconstructions
Black Politics in the Long Nineteenth Century
- Van Gosse, David Waldstreicher, Van Gosse, David Waldstreicher(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- University of Pennsylvania Press(Publisher)
...Every man in this body knows this.” 20 The new Fugitive Slave Laws would seek to overcome this skepticism in a number of ways, both by empowering a federal bureaucracy of commissioners, appointed by U.S. circuit courts, and by instituting harsh penalties for those who might interfere with the recovery of accused fugitives. 21 Despite these provisions, southern skepticism remained. Increasingly it had become apparent that this lack of trust was the essence of the sectional dispute and the passage of a law was not nearly enough to make the Compromise effective. Reflecting upon the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution, Senator Daniel Dickinson, a Democrat of New York, opined that “the theory of the compact is, that the fugitive will be justly dealt with in the jurisdiction to which he is returned… [without this] for a just and necessary provision of the fundamental law a system of conflict and violence will be substituted.” Such conflict and violence could only be avoided if the northern public had confidence in southern justice. Dickinson insisted that this this confidence could only be secured if “the masses of the people of the free States” rejected abolitionists who “under the garb of benevolence and superior sanctity” had undermined the recovery of fugitive slaves. 22 In the eyes of many the center of this debate would be this matter of trust, and resolving this lack of trust was a critical issue in the politics of the Compromise of 1850. Lack of trust might be seen as legitimate skepticism of southern “justice” or it might be seen as a product of abolitionist agitation, but in either case it was an obstacle to the success of the Compromise. From a southern perspective, this mistrust was certainly compounded by the fact that the Fugitive Slave Law had passed without significant northern support...
eBook - ePubWilliam Still
The Underground Railroad and the Angel at Philadelphia
- William C. Kashatus(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- University of Notre Dame Press(Publisher)
...The law endangered not only fugitives but also free blacks, who could be kidnapped and sold into bondage. Abolitionists argued in vain that the law was unconstitutional since it denied the alleged slave an impartial trial by jury and thus gave unbridled authority to slave owners to retrieve a runaway. 17 At least that was the intention of the measure. But Matthew Pinsker points out that the Fugitive Slave Act “never really functioned as its framers intended” if the “process of fugitive slave rendition and the common-law doctrine of recaption” are considered. 18 According to Pinsker, the “preferred solution to the fugitive crisis for the majority of slaveholders was recaption, or taking back one’s mobile property when it got lost or wandered away,” much as in recovery of farm animals. Slaveholders considered recaption to be “an essential element of their right to human property.” 19 But abolitionists saw recaption as kidnapping. Accordingly, northern antislavery lawyers and politicians worked assiduously in the courts and in Congress to expose the paradox, specifically that “American federalism included a presumption of personal liberty to free black residents on free soil.” Acting on this understanding as well as on high-profile cases of federal rendition, Underground Railroad agents and other abolitionists “mobilized over the 1850s to frustrate all types of fugitive recapture.” Their efforts, according to Pinsker, were, “to a surprising degree, successful.” 20 Quaker abolitionists, in particular, were incensed by the Fugitive Slave Act, considering it a serious violation of personal liberties and constitutional guarantees by allowing the evils of chattel slavery to expand onto free soil. Those Friends who participated on the Underground Railroad went even further...
