In a sweeping move meant to calm tensions between North and South, President Millard Fillmore signed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 into law on September 18, 1850.
The new law required all escaped enslaved people to be returned to their enslavers and compelled officials and citizens in free states to cooperate in their capture. Federal commissioners were empowered to decide the fate of alleged fugitives without jury trials, and the accused could not testify in their own defense. Commissioners received $10 if they ruled the person a fugitive, which was twice the amount they received for declaring them free.
Southerners had long complained that the earlier Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was ineffective, citing rising numbers of escapes through networks like the Underground Railroad. Attempts by Northern states to pass “personal liberty laws,” which gave fugitives jury trials or banned state officials from aiding in captures, angered Southern leaders who saw them as direct assaults on property rights.
The updated law brought with it heavy penalties. Citizens who assisted fugitives face fines up to $1,000 (approximately $38,000 today) and six months in jail. Law enforcement officers who refused to enforce the act faced fines, while those who captured fugitives received bonuses.
Abolitionists and moderates alike derided the law as an overreach of federal authority. Underground Railroad leaders vowed to continue their work.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin is inspired by the plight of fugitives, called the law a moral crisis that demands national reckoning.
