Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 in the United States
Fugitive Slave Laws The Constitution and the Law of 1793
Introduction to Fugitive Slave Law of 1793
Aware that the northern states might become havens of refuge for escaped slaves, South Carolina’s delegates at the Constitutional Convention (1787) sought the return of slaves on the same basis as the extradition of common criminals. They were unsuccessful. Article IV, Section 2, merely stated that persons “held to Service or Labour” in one state who escape into another state “shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.” The ambiguity of the document made necessary the law of 1793 whereby the process of taking custody was first defined. The statute authorized slave owners or their agents to apprehend fugitives in any state or territory and provided that owners could apply to a circuit or district judge for a certificate to take custody of runaways. The law did not, however, grant judges power to issue warrants of arrest, nor did it require federal marshals to assist owners. The law was not uniformly enforced, and its legal defects irritated slaveholders.
Further difficulties arose from free-state legislation defining citizenship, a necessary accompaniment to the gradual emancipation acts (1776-1827) that ultimately abolished northern slavery. These early personal liberty laws were partly designed to protect free blacks from dishonest slave-catchers. Organized antislavery efforts in the 1830s denounced northern complicity in bondage, citing the act of 1793 as a primary example. Southern dissatisfaction, in turn, mounted as slaveholders detected antislavery conspiracies in a growing movement to rescue the fugitives. See Underground Railroad.” (1)
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Notes and References
- Information about Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 in the Encarta Online Encyclopedia