Fugit Slave Act Research Paper

To understand one of the most prominent laws that affected the people of the United States, the history of where it began needs to be understood. The history of the second Fugitive Slave Act goes back to 1793 when the first Fugitive Slave Act was enacted by Congress, accrediting local governments to seize and return fugitive slaves to their owners and enforced penalties on anyone who aided in their flight. The law stated that “no person held to service of labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such labor or service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.” Extensive defiance to the 1793 law later led to the passage of the Act of 1850, which added further arrangements regarding runaways and demanded even harsher punishments
"Many families who had lived in New York City for twenty years, fled from it now" noted Harriet Jacobs in the autobiography, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”. The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act provided for federal circuit courts to delegate commissioners to hear rendition proceedings, and it authorized commissioners and federal marshals to form an armed band of bystanders to capture fugitives. The following provision made every adult male a potential slave catcher. Furthermore, the act restrained the federal government to pay all expenses associated with guarding escape attempts, and it provided that obstruction of the law was punishable by a fine of $1,000 and confinement for six months. Fugitives who had bolted and had been living as independent people in the North, some of them for years, were captured and sent back to