In the United States before the Civil War, the government passed laws stating that escaped slaves were to be arrested and returned to their owners. The laws applied even if an escaped, or fugitive, slave was captured in a state that did not allow slavery. The U.S. Congress passed the first Fugitive Slave Act in 1793. The second, passed in 1850, was much more harsh. It brought the North and the South much closer to civil war.

Fugitive Slave Act of 1793

A section of the U.S. Constitution, which took effect in 1789, stated that escaped slaves had to be returned to their owners. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was intended to enforce this part of the Constitution. The act allowed any slaveholder to capture an alleged runaway slave and bring the slave before a judge. The judge had full power to decide whether the slave should be returned to the slaveholder. No jury heard the case.

The act angered many people in the North who opposed slavery. Northern states passed laws that gave some legal rights to escaped slaves. Some Northerners formed a secret network to help slaves escaping from the South to freedom. This network became known as the Underground Railroad.

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

The issue of statehood for California revived the North-South conflict over fugitive slaves. California came under U.S. control in 1848 as a result of the treaty that ended the Mexican War. In the same year gold was discovered in California, luring thousands of American settlers to the area. Californians were soon ready for statehood, but they did not want slavery. This threatened to upset the balance in the numbers of states that allowed slavery, called slave states, and those that did not, called free states.

Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky offered a compromise—called the Compromise of 1850—to settle this and other issues. California was to be admitted to the United States as a free state, but only at a price. Part of the price was the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

The new Fugitive Slave Act extended the 1793 act. It set severe penalties for anyone who helped a slave to escape. Any U.S. marshal who refused to enforce the law also faced penalties. The 1850 act also moved some cases involving fugitive slaves out of the federal courts. It gave special commissioners the power to hear such cases and to order the return of slaves to their owners. Accused slaves were not allowed to testify in their own defense.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 increased the pressure on escaped slaves to flee all the way to Canada. There the U.S. law could not be used against them. But the main effect of the act was to harden the opposition of Northerners to slavery. People in free states were furious that the law banned them from giving aid to escaped slaves. More and more people in free states began taking action against slavery (see abolitionist movement). People in the Southern states, in turn, were angered by the Northerners who ignored the law.

Repeal

Bitterness over the 1850 act helped to widen the gap between the North and the South. Eventually the conflict over slavery led some Southern states to withdraw from the Union. In 1861 the Civil War broke out. Even after the war began, the Fugitive Slave acts were still sometimes enforced. The acts were not repealed until 1864.