The Fugitive Slave Act was one of the most controversial pieces of legislation in the antebellum (pre-Civil War) era and was a contributor to the sectional divisions between the North and the South.
After the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), in which the U. S. took the land that it now the southwest of the country, intensified the debate between the North and the South over the extension of slavery. The key question became: Could slavery be extended to the newly acquired land from Mexico and how would that be determined? Many in the North, primarily abolitionists and "free-soilers" (those who wanted to keep the new territories free) disapproved of the expansion of slavery to the West. The South thought the expansion essential to their way of life. One of the first compromised to try to solve this sectional view was the Compromise of 1850, engineered by Illinois Democrat Senator Stephen Douglas. One of the key facets of the law was a pro-South provision, the Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed southern slave owners, with support of the federal government, to go to the North to retrieve runaway slaves.
The act outraged many in the North who believed it was a violation of their position as free states to allow slave holders come into their territory to forcibly take African Americans back into slavery. Frederick Douglass, the former slave and abolitionist leader, saw the law as a violation of American liberties, stating,
Human government is for the protection of rights; and when human government destroys human rights, it ceases to be a government, and becomes a foul and blasting conspiracy; and is entitled to no respect whatever.
Northerners were also upset at the abuses of the law as in the case of Solomon Northrup, a free African American who was captured by southern bounty hunters and sold into slavery (see his book Twelve Years a Slave). Lastly, it contributed to sectionalism because many Northerners saw it as an attempt of the South to control the federal government, and further extend the system of slavery.
The South, obviously, supported the law and tried to put it into strong effect. The Compromise of 1850 had given the North some provisions, such as bringing California into the union as a free state, so they were fairly giving the right to capture their runaway slaves in the North. A result that most angered the South was the North's blatant disregard for the law. In many cases where runaway slaves were brought to trial, Northern juries refused to hand them over to bounty hunters and therefore put them into slavery, a violation of the Fugitive Slave Act according to Southerns. It also led the South to believe that the North was trying to limit their rights as slaveholders.
The Fugitive Slave Act was part of a raft of legislation known as the Compromise of 1850. This was an attempt to take the heat out of growing tensions over the deeply contentious issue of slavery. In actual fact, it had almost the exact opposite effect. The highly controversial Act stipulated that all runaway slaves had to be returned to their masters, and that free states and their officials were required to assist in their return.
To many in the North, the Fugitive Slave Act was an outrage, both morally and legally. In terms of the latter, it was widely resented as an attack on the rights of the Northern states to manage their own affairs. The Southern states, while forever insisting on the importance of their rights being respected, were at the same time infringing on the rights of free states. This attitude was seen in the North as hypocritical in the extreme. More seriously, it appeared to confirm what many Northerners had long believed: that the South enjoyed disproportionate political power in the United States, which they were flagrantly abusing in order to defend a cruel, immoral institution. In the North at least, the Compromise of 1850 was regarded as anything but. It merely served to heighten tensions and drive a further wedge, politically and culturally, between North and South.
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