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The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, commonly referred to as
the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, was one of the five laws that passed in the Compromise of 1850. The Fugitive Slave Law stated that any United States marshal
or official who did not arrest an alleged runaway slave was liable to a fine of $1,000. Law-enforcement officials had a duty
to arrest anyone suspected of being a runaway slave, based solely on a claimant's sworn testimony of ownership.
The suspected slave could not ask for a jury trial or testify on his or her own behalf. In addition, any person who aided
a runaway slave by providing food or shelter was subject to six months' imprisonment and a $1,000 fine. Officers who
captured a fugitive slave were entitled to a fee. Of the five bills that comprised the Compromise
of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was the most controversial. The passage of this Act, along
with slaveholding rights in Texas, allowed California to enter the union as a free state
and prohibited the slave trade in the District of Columbia. This Act was particularly hated by abolitionists and stoked the fire of the Underground Railroad. (See: The Compromise of 1850
and the Fugitive Slave Act: The Ramifications.)
The Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 consists of five laws passed in September of 1850
that dealt with the issue of slavery. In 1849 California requested permission to enter the Union as a free state, potentially
upsetting the balance between the free and slave states in the U.S. Senate. Senator Henry Clay introduced a series of resolutions
on January 29, 1850, in an attempt to seek a compromise and avert a crisis between North and South. As part of the Compromise
of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act, commonly referred to as the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, was amended and the slave
trade in Washington, D.C., was abolished. Furthermore, California entered the Union as a free state and a territorial government
was created in Utah. Also, an act was passed settling a boundary dispute between Texas and New Mexico that also established
a territorial government in New Mexico.
The Compromise of 1850 was comprised of the following five bills:
1) California was entered as a
free state.
2) New Mexico and Utah were each allowed to use popular sovereignty to decide the issue of slavery. In other words, the people would decide whether
the states would be free or slave.
3) The Republic of Texas relinquished claimed land in present-day New Mexico and
received $10 million to pay its debt to Mexico.
4) The slave trade was abolished in the District of Columbia.
5) The
Fugitive Slave Act made any federal official who did not arrest a runaway slave liable to pay a fine.
Sources: U.S. Department of State; Stanley W. Campbell, The Slave Catchers:
Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, 1850-1860, 1970; Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic : An Account of the
United States Government's Relations to Slavery, 2002; John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, Runaway Slaves: Rebels on
the Plantation, 1999 Yale Law School: The Avalon Project.
Recommended Reading: Abolitionists
and the American Civil War; Frederick Douglas; John Brown
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