The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom. Wilbur Henry Siebert
English at New Haven for the mutual surrender of fugitives, a step that was preceded by a complaint from the commissioners of the United Colonies to Governor Stuyvesant of New Netherlands, to the effect that the Dutch agent at Hartford was harboring one of their Indian slaves, and by the refusal to return some of Stuyvesant's runaway servants from New Haven until the redress of the grievance. It was only when some of the fugitives had been restored to New Netherlands, and a proclamation, issued in a spirit of retaliation by the Lords of the West India Company, forbidding the rendition of fugitive slaves to New Haven, had been annulled, that the agreement for the mutual surrender of runaways was made by the two parties. Negotiations in regard to fugitives early took place between Maryland and New Netherlands; at one time on account of the flight of some slaves from the Southern colony into the Northern colony, and later on account of the reversal of the conditions. The temper of the Dutch when calling for their servants in 1659 was not conciliatory, for they threatened, if their demand should be refused, "to publish free liberty, access and recess to all planters, servants, negroes, fugitives, and runaways which may go into New Netherland." The escape of fugitives from the Eastern colonies northward to Canada was also a constant source of trouble between the French and the Dutch, and between the French and English.[34]
When, therefore, emancipation acts were passed by Vermont and four other states the new question came into existence. It presented itself also in the Western territories. The framers of the Northwest Ordinance found themselves confronted by the question, and they dealt with it in the spirit of compromise. They enacted a stipulation for the territory, "that any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original states, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service aforesaid."[35]
Meanwhile the Federal Convention in Philadelphia had the same question to consider. The result of its deliberations on the point was not different from that of Congress expressed in the Ordinance. Among the concessions to slavery that the Federal Convention felt constrained to make, this provision found place in the Constitution: "No person held to service or labor 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 labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."[36] Neither of these clauses appears to have been subjected to much debate, and they were adopted by votes that testify to their acceptableness; the former received the support of all members present but one, the latter passed unanimously.
In the sentiment of the time there seems to have been no sense of humiliation on the part of the North over the conclusions reached concerning the rendition of escaped slaves. It had been seen by Northern men that the subject was one requiring conciliatory treatment, if it were not to become a block in the way of certain Southern states entering the Union; and, besides, the opinion generally prevailed that slavery would gradually disappear from all the states, and the riddle would thus solve itself.[37] The South was pleased, but apparently not exultant, over the supposed security gained for its slave property. General C. C. Pinckney, of South Carolina, probably expressed the view of most Southerners when he said that the terms for the security of slave property gained by his section were not bad, although they were not the best from the slaveholders' standpoint, and that they permitted the recapture of runaways in any part of America—a right the South had never before enjoyed.[38] In abstract law the rights of the slave-owner had in truth been well provided for. Especially deserving of note is the fact that a constitutional basis had been furnished for claims which, in case slavery did not disappear from the country—a contingency not anticipated by the fathers—might be insisted upon as having the fundamental and positive sanction of the government. But what would be the fate of the running slave was a matter with which, after all, private principles and sympathies, and not merely constitutional provisions, would have a good deal to do in each case.
For several years the stipulations for the rendition of fugitive slaves remained inoperative. At length, in 1791, a case of kidnapping occurred at Washington, Pennsylvania, and this served to bring the subject once more to the public mind. Early in 1793 Congress passed the first Fugitive Slave Law.[39] This law provided for the reclamation of fugitives from justice and fugitives from labor. We are concerned, of course, with the latter class only. The sections of the act dealing with this division are too long to be here quoted: they empowered the owner, his agent or attorney, to seize the fugitive and take him before a United States circuit or district judge within the state where the arrest was made, or before any local magistrate within the county in which the seizure occurred. The oral testimony of the claimant, or an affidavit from a magistrate in the state from which he came, must certify that the fugitive owed service as claimed. Upon such showing the claimant secured his warrant for removing the runaway to the state or territory from which he had fled. Five hundred dollars fine constituted the penalty for hindering arrest, or for rescuing or harboring the fugitive after notice that he or she was a fugitive from labor.
All the evidence goes to show that this law was ineffectual; Mrs. McDougall points out that two cases of resistance to the principle of the act occurred before the close of 1793.[40] Attempts at amendment were made in Congress as early as the winter of 1796, and were repeated at irregular intervals down to 1850. Secret or "underground" methods of rescue were already well understood in and around Philadelphia by 1804. Ohio and Pennsylvania, and perhaps other states, heeded the complaints of neighboring slave states, and gave what force they might to the law of 1793 by enacting laws for the recovery of fugitives within their borders. The law of Pennsylvania for this purpose was passed the same year in which Mr. Clay, then Secretary of State, began negotiations with England looking toward the extradition of slaves from Canada (1826); but it was quashed by the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the Prigg case in 1842.[41] By 1850 the Northern states were traversed by numerous lines of Underground Railroad, and the South was declaring its losses of slave property to be enormous.
The result of the frequent transgressions of the Fugitive Slave Law on the one hand and of the clamorous demand for a measure adequate to the needs of the South on the other, was the passage of a new Fugitive Recovery Bill in 1850.[42] The increased rigor of the provisions of this act was ill adapted to generate the respect that a good law secures, and, indeed, must have in order to be enforced. The law contained features sufficiently objectionable to make many converts to the cause of the abolitionists; and a systematic evasion of the law was regarded as an imperative duty by thousands. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was based on the earlier law, but was fitted out with a number of clauses, dictated by a self-interest on the part of the South that ignored the rights of every party save those of the master. Under the regulations of the act the certificate authorizing the arrest and removal of a fugitive slave was to be granted to the claimant by the United States commissioner, the courts, or the judge of the proper circuit, district, or county. If the arrest were made without process, the claimant was to take the fugitive forthwith before the commissioner or other official, and there the case was to be determined in a summary manner. The refusal of a United States marshal or his deputies to execute a commissioner's certificate, properly directed, involved a fine of one thousand dollars; and failure to prevent the escape of the negro after arrest, made the marshal liable, on his official bond, for the value of the slave. When necessary to insure a faithful observance of the fugitive slave clause in the Constitution, the commissioners, or persons appointed by them, had the authority to summon the posse comitatus of the county, and "all good citizens" were "commanded to aid and assist in the prompt and efficient execution" of the law. The testimony of the alleged fugitive could not be received in evidence. Ownership was determined by the simple affidavit of the person claiming the slave; and when determined it was shielded by the certificate of the commissioner from "all molestation … by any process issued by any court, judge, magistrate, or other person whomsoever." Any act meant to obstruct the claimant in his arrest of the fugitive, or any attempt to rescue, harbor, or conceal the fugitive, laid the person interfering liable "to a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, and imprisonment not exceeding six months," also liable for "civil damages to the party injured in the sum of one thousand dollars for each fugitive so lost." In all cases where the proceedings took place before a commissioner he was "entitled to a fee of ten dollars in full for his services," provided that a warrant for the fugitive's arrest was issued; if, however, the fugitive was discharged, the commissioner was entitled to five dollars only.[43]