Slavery, Fugitive Slave Law, 1850s
African-Americans with wagon pointing guns at slave-catchers. Fugitive slave catchers were people who returned escaped slaves to their owners. The Fugitive Slave Law was passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850. The Act was one of the most controversial elements of the 1850 compromise and heightened Northern fears of a slave power conspiracy. It required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be returned to their masters. At the time of Fugitive Slave catchers the North was moving more in the direction of abolition. The Fugitive Slave Law stated that every citizen was responsible for helping to recover and return fugitive slaves; so any white person from the North or South could be, and was expected to be, a fugitive slave catcher. The Northern states, however began giving more freedom and rights to black people; as a result many slaves from the South fled north where they thought they could live with more opportunity for freedom. As laws even in the North punished both the people who helped slaves escape as well as the fugitive slaves, many fled to Canada where slavery has remained illegal since 1833. Illustration from: Underground Railroad, 1872.
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