Volume 12 , Issue 15

Fugitive Slave Act (1850)

Fugitive Slave Act, Social Issues of 1850, passed by United States congress, September 18, 1850, as part of the compromise of 1850 between Southern slaveholding interests and Northern Free-Soilers. This was known as one of the most controversial acts of the 1850 compromise and heightened northern fears of a slave power conspiracy. It declared that all runaway slaves be brought back to their masters. Abolitionists nicknamed it the "Bloodhound Law" for the dogs that were used to track down runaway slaves. It was in payment for Southern support for California's admission to the Union as a free state and ending the slave trade in the District of Columbia, that Congress enacted the Fugitive Slave Act to assist the South with maintaining a tight rein on slaveholders... property.

The new law created a force of federal commissioners empowered to pursue fugitive slaves in any state and return them to their owners. No statute of limitations applied, so that even those slaves who had been free for many years could be (and were) returned. SEE Also: Fugitive Slave Act
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