National Events That Influenced Lowellians'
Views on Slavery and Abolition
Document 3

Document 3: “An Act [The Fugitive Slave Act],” 1850

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 extended the provisions of the original 1793 Fugitive Slave Act and fugitive clause in the U.S. Constitution. The 1850 Act required law enforcement officials – at any level – to arrest people suspected of escaping enslavement based on as little evidence as sworn testimony from a white man. The Act was broadly condemned in the North, prompting multiple instances of violent resistance. Many northern law enforcement and judicial officials refused to enforce it.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was part of a series of bills called “The Compromise of 1850,” which also included:

Admitting California to the Union as a free state,
Banning of the slave trade in Washington, DC, while still permitting slavery there,
Defining the northern and western boarders of Texas, and
Establishing territorial governments for New Mexico and Utah with not restrictions on whether they would be free or slave states.

The bills were an attempt to diffuse tension between slave states and free states.

Vocabulary

Procuring: To acquire or obtain
Apprehension: Seizure by legal process
Claimant: A person who makes an assertion that something is due or owed

Page 2. See full document in link below.

SEC. 6 … when a person held to service or labor in any State or Territory of the United States, has heretofore or shall hereafter escape into another State or Territory of the United States, the person or persons to whom such service or labor may be due . . . may pursue and reclaim such fugitive person, either by procuring a warrant from some one of the courts … for the apprehension of such fugitive from service or labor, or by seizing and arresting such fugitive … [and taking them] before such court, judge, or commissioner, whose duty it shall be to hear and determine the case of such claimant in a summary manner …

SEC. 7 … any person who shall knowingly and willingly obstruct, hinder, or prevent such claimant, his agent or attorney, or any person or persons lawfully assisting him, her, or them, from arresting such a fugitive from service or labor … or attempt to rescue, such fugitive from service or labor, from the custody of such claimant … or assist such person so owing service or labor as aforesaid … shall harbor or conceal such fugitive, so as to prevent the discovery and arrest of such person … [shall] be subject to a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, and imprisonment not exceeding six months . . . and shall moreover forfeit and pay, by way of civil damages to the party injured by such illegal conduct, the sum of one thousand dollars for each fugitive so lost as aforesaid ….

Text-Dependent Questions

In these two sections of the Fugitive Slave Act, what is required of any American citizen who encounters a “fugitive of service or labor”? What actions would be illegal according to this act? Make a two-column chart with one column titled “required actions” and the other titled “illegal actions.”
What happens to citizens who don’t comply?

Discussion Questions

Often, legislation is created to solve a problem. What problem does the Fugitive Slave Act seem to address? What new problem(s) does the act create?
Compare the Fugitive Slave Act to Article 4, Section 2 of the US Constitution (Document 1). How does the FSA go further than the original law?
Read this document along with Rev. Edson’s diary entry (Document 26) and the “Manstealers in Lowell!” article about Nathaniel Booth (Document 22a). What were Lowellians risking by ignoring the law and helping freedom-seekers?

Print document and transcript

CitationThe Fugitive Slave Act, 1850National Museum of African American History and Culture, https://nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2009.14.4Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.33700200/?st=text

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