Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3, US Constitution, 1787, FULL TEXT via The Avalon Project, Yale Law School
US Constitution (National Archives)
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.US C
1793 Fugitive Slave Act, February 12, 1793, FULL TEXT via A Century of Lawmaking, Library of Congress
Abolitionist illustration criticizing the activities of slave catchers under the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act (Jesse Torrey, A Portraiture of Domestic Slavery in the United States, 1817 )
Sec. 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That whenever the executive authority of any State in the Union, or of either of the territories northwest or south of the river Ohio, shall demand any person as a fugitive from justice, of the executive authority of any such state or territory to which such person shall have fled, and shall moreover produce the copy of an indictment found, or an affidavit made before a magistrate of any state or territory as aforesaid, charging the person so demanded, with having committed treason, felony or other crime, certified as authentic by the governor or chief magistrate of the state or territory from whence the person so charged, fled, it shall be the duty of the executive authority of the state or territory to which such person shall have fled, to cause him or her to be arrested and secured, and notice of the arrest to be given to the executive authority making such demand, or to the agent of such authority appointed to receive the fugitive, and to cause the fugitive to be delivered to such agent when he shall appear: But if no such agent shall appear within six mouths from the time of the arrest, the prisoner may be discharged. And all costs or expenses incurred in the apprehending, securing, and transmitting such fugitive to the elate or territory making such demand, shall be paid by such state or territory.
Sec. 4. And be it further enacted, That any person who shall knowingly and willingly obstruct or hinder such claimant, his agent or attorney when so arrested pursuant to the authority herein given or declared: or shall harbor or conceal such person after notice that he or she was a fugitive from labor, as aforesaid, shall, for either of the said offences, forfeit and pay the sum of five hundred dollars. Which penalty may be recovered by and fur the benefit of such claimant, by action of debt, in any court proper to try the same; saving moreover to the person claiming such labor or service, his right of action for or on account of the said injuries or either of them.
Act to Prevent Kidnapping, March 27, 1820, FULL TEXT via Acts of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg, PA: C. Gleim, 1820), 104-106
Abolitionist cartoon depicting the kidnapping of a free Black resident (Library Company of Philadelphia)
Sec. 1. BE it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in General Assembly met, and it is hereby enacted by the authority of the same, That if any person or persons shall from and after the passing of this act, by force or violence take and. carry away, or shall by fraud or kidnapping false pretences seduce or cause to be seduced, or shall attempt so to take, carry away or seduce any negro or mulatto from any part or parts of this Commonwealth, to any other place or places whatsoever, out of this Commonwealth, with a design and intention of selling and disposing of, or of causing to be sold, or of keeping and detaining, or of causing to be kept and detained, such negro or mulatto as a slave or servant for a year or years, every such person or persons, his or their aiders and abettors, shall on conviction thereof in any court of this Commonwealth having competent jurisdiction, be deemed guilty of a felony, and shall forfeit and pay at the discretion of the court passing the sentence, any sum not less than five hundred dollars, nor more than two thousand dollars, one half whereof shall be paid to the person or persons who shall prosecute for the same, and the other half to this Commonwealth, and moreover shall be sentenced to undergo a servitude for any term or time not less than seven years, nor exceeding twenty-one years, and shall be confined, kept to hard labor, fed and clothed in manner as is directed by the penal law of this Commonwealth for persons convicted of robbery.
Abolitionist David Ruggles founds the New York Committee of Vigilance, a self-protection society for Black New Yorkers aimed at preventing kidnapping. The group soon expands its mission to include aiding and sheltering freedom seekers. Similar vigilance committees organize across the North, creating a series of interconnected local networks to assist freedom seekers.
[This post is still under construction, more forthcoming in 2023]
Philadelphia abolitionists organize their own vigilance committee in August modeled after Ruggles’s New York organization. Initially led by Black activist Robert Purvis, the group goes underground for much of the 1840s before returning to the public eye under the leadership of Black abolitionist William Still in 1852.
[This post is still under construction, more forthcoming in 2023]
Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 1842, FULL TEXT via Justia
…The clause of the Constitution of the United States relating to fugitives from labor manifestly contemplates the existence of a positive unqualified right on the part of the owner of the slave which no state law or regulation can in any way qualify, regulate, control, or restrain. Any state law or regulation which interrupts, limits, delays, or postpones the rights of the owner to the immediate command of his service or labor operates pro tanto a discharge of the slave therefrom. The question can never be how much he is discharged from, but whether he is discharged from any by the natural or necessary operation of the state laws or state regulations. The question is not one of quantity or degree, but of withholding or controlling the incidents of a positive right.
The owner of a fugitive slave has the same right to seize and take him in a State to which he has escaped or fled that he had in the State from which he escaped, and it is well known that this right to seizure or recapture is universally acknowledged in all the slaveholding States. The Court have not the slightest hesitation in holding that, under and in virtue of the Constitution, the owner of the slave is clothed with the authority in every State of the Union to seize and recapture his slave wherever he can do it without any breach of the peace or illegal violence. In this sense and to this extent, this clause in the Constitution may properly be said to execute itself, and to require no aid from legislation, state or national….
Pearl mass escape rattles Washington, DC slaveholders on April 15, as 77 freedom seekers attempt to flee the nation’s capital by boat. Armed whites overtake the group, and slaveholders sell many of the freedom seekers south. Later, local authorities convict two white allies, Daniel Drayton and Edward Sayres, on charges of slave stealing. Unable to pay their fines, Drayton and Sayres remain in jail until President Millard Fillmore pardons them in 1852.
[This post is still under construction, more forthcoming in 2023]
1850 Fugitive Slave Act, September 18, 1850, FULL TEXT via The Avalon Project, Yale Law School
Political cartoon attacking the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law (Library of Congress)
SECTION 7. And be it further enacted, That 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, either with or without process as aforesaid, or shall rescue, or attempt to rescue, such fugitive from service or labor, from the custody of such claimant, his or her agent or attorney, or other person or persons lawfully assisting as aforesaid, when so arrested, pursuant to the authority herein given and declared; or shall aid, abet, or assist such person so owing service or labor as aforesaid, directly or indirectly, to escape from such claimant, his agent or attorney, or other person or persons legally authorized as aforesaid; or shall harbor or conceal such fugitive, so as to prevent the discovery and arrest of such person, after notice or knowledge of the fact that such person was a fugitive from service or labor as aforesaid, shall, for either of said offences, be subject to a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, and imprisonment not exceeding six months, by indictment and conviction before the District Court of the United States for the district in which such offence may have been committed, or before the proper court of criminal jurisdiction, if committed within any one of the organized Territories of the United States; 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, to be recovered by action of debt, in any of the District or Territorial Courts aforesaid, within whose jurisdiction the said offence may have been committed.
Date(s): escaped 1849, resistance September 11, 1851
Location(s): Christiana, Pennsylvania
Outcome: Freedom, slaveholder Edward Gorsuch killed
Summary:
In 1849, four enslaved men, Noah Buley, Nelson Ford, George Hammond, and Joshua Hammond, escaped from Maryland slaveholder Edward Gorsuch and settled near Christiana in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Two years later in September 1851, Gorsuch discovered the whereabouts of his runaways with the help of a local spy and made arrangements in Philadelphia with the fugitive slave commissioner to organize a posse that would try to apprehend the four freedom seekers under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. But operatives from the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee learned of these plans and quickly notified a vigilance group in Christiana, led by Black couple William and Eliza Parker.
Illustration of the 1851 Christiana Resistance, colorized by Gabe Pinsker (House Divided Project)
Gorsuch’s posse arrived at the Parker stone farmhouse (where at least some of the runaways were hiding) just after dawn on September 11, 1851, but William Parker stubbornly refused them entrance. Eliza Parker then blew a horn to help alert their neighbors and local vigilance supporters to the unfolding confrontation. Violence erupted. Black activists shot Gorsuch dead and wounded his son. The federal officers fled the scene. Pro-slavery forces from across the country immediately denounced the resistance but government officials moved too slowly and the Parkers and the four young freedom seekers escaped to Canada. Federal prosecutors eventually charged 38 local men with treason, to send a stern political message, but the trial, held in Philadelphia in late November and early December, proved to be a political catastrophe for the Fillmore Administration. The jury acquitted the first defendant, a white farmer named Castner Hanway, in about fifteen minutes. Prosecutors then released the rest of the accused. There were other violent fugitive slave rescues in 1851, most notably in Boston, Massachusetts and Syracuse, New York, but the Christiana resistance was the most dramatic and decisive victory for the abolitionist forces in their escalating campaign to undermine the federal Fugitive Slave Law.
The Parker “riot” house in Christiana, as it was originally known, is no longer standing, but there are some existing structures and historic sites within the NPS Network to Freedom which can help commemorate this episode, including the Gorsuch Tavern in Verona, Maryland, Eliza Parker’s escape site at Belle Vue Farm in Havre de Grace, Maryland, and Zercher’s Hotel in the town of Christiana, Pennsylvania, where government authorities first conducted the inquest in the aftermath of the violence on September 11, 1851. To view more details about these sites and their level of accessibility to the public, consult our various Network to Freedom maps in this online handbook.
US troops return freedom seeker Anthony Burns to slavery from Boston on June 2. The federal government’s controversial tactics turn more Northerners against the Fugitive Slave Act. Boston abolitionists later purchase Burns’s freedom, and Burns attends Oberlin College in Ohio before moving to Canada as a preacher.
[This post is still under construction, more forthcoming in 2023]
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