Fugitive slave laws in the United States

The fugitive slave laws were laws passed by the United States Congress in 1793 and 1850 to provide for the return of enslaved people who escaped from one state into another state or territory. The idea of the fugitive slave law was derived from the Fugitive Slave Clause which is in the United States Constitution (Article IV, Section 2, Paragraph 3). It was thought that forcing states to deliver fugitive slaves back to enslavement violated states' rights due to state sovereignty and was believed that seizing state property should not be left up to the states. The Fugitive Slave Clause states that fugitive slaves "shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due", which abridged state rights because forcing people back into slavery was a form of retrieving private property.^[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.^[2]

Slave Trade Acts

Turner Chapel (Oakville)

Fugitive slave advertisements in the United States

Campbell, Stanley W. (1970). . University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-1141-6. Archived from the original on 2012-06-26. Retrieved 2017-08-28.

The Slave Catchers: Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, 1850–1860

(2002). The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government's Relations to Slavery. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-515805-9.

Fehrenbacher, Don E.

; Schweninger, Loren (1999). Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-508451-9.

Franklin, John Hope

Merriam, John M. (1888). (PDF). Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society. New Series Vol. V. Worcester: American Antiquarian Society (published 1889): 303–342.

"The Legislative History of the Ordinance of 1787"

Attribution:

. The New Student's Reference Work . 1914.

"Fugitive-Slave Laws, The"

. New International Encyclopedia. 1906.

"Fugitive Slave Law"

. The American Cyclopædia. 1879.

"Fugitive"

McCarthy, B. Eugene; Doughton, Thomas L. (2007). . University of Massachusetts Press.