AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
The following monograph was written while the author was a student in the "Harvard Annex" as a study in the Seminary course given by Professor Albert Bushnell Hart. The work has continued during parts of the four years since 1887. The effort has been to trace in some measure the development of public sentiment upon the subject, to prepare an outline of Colonial legislation and of the work of Congress during the entire period, and to give accounts of typical cases illustrative of conditions and opinions. Only a few of the more important cases are described minutely, but a critical list of the authorities may be found in the bibliographical appendix.
The thanks of the author are due first to Professor Hart, under whose direction and with whose assistance and encouragement the monograph has been prepared; then to Miss Anna B. Thompson, without whose careful training in the Thayer Academy and continued sympathy, the work could not have been undertaken. Many thanks are due also to the authorities of the Library of Harvard College for the use, in the alcoves, of their large and conveniently arranged collection of books and pamphlets on United States History, and to the assistants in the Boston Public and Massachusetts State Libraries for courteous aid. Colonel T. W. Higginson has kindly examined the chapter on the cases from 1850 to 1860, suggesting some interesting details; and Mr. Arthur Gilman has read the whole in proof, and made many valuable suggestions.
MARION GLEASON McDOUGALL.
Rockland, Mass., April 2, 1891.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
[LEGISLATION AND CASES BEFORE THE CONSTITUTION.]
§ 1. [Elements of colonial slavery]
§ 2. [Regulations as to fugitives (1640-1700)]
§ 3. [Treatment of fugitives]
§ 4. [Regulations in New England colonies]
§ 5. [Escapes in New England: Attucks case]
§ 6. [Dutch regulations in New Netherlands]
§ 7. [Escapes from New Amsterdam]
§ 8. [Intercolonial regulations]
§ 9. [Intercolonial cases ]
§ 10. [International relations]
§ 11. [International cases]
§ 12. [Relations with the mother country ]
§ 13. [Regulation under the Articles of Confederation (1781-1788) ]
§ 14. [Ordinance for the Northwest Territory (1787) ]
§ 15. [The Fugitive question in the Constitutional Conventions ]
CHAPTER II.
[LEGISLATION FROM 1789 TO 1850.]
§ 16. [Effect of the fugitive slave clause in the Constitution]
§ 17. [The first Fugitive Slave Act (1793)]
§ 18. [Discussion of the first act]
§ 19. [Propositions of 1797 and 1802]
§ 20. [Propositions from 1817 to 1822]
§ 21. [Period of the Missouri Compromise (1819-1822)]
§ 22. [Status of the question from 1823 to 1847]
§ 23. [Canada and Mexico places of refuge]
§ 24. [Status of fugitives on the high seas]
§ 25. [Kidnapping from 1793 to 1850: Prigg case]
§ 26. [Necessity of more stringent fugitive slave provisions]
§ 27. [Action of Congress from 1847 to 1850]
§ 28. [Slavery in the District of Columbia]
§ 29. [The second Fugitive Slave Act (1850)]
§ 30. [Provisions of the second Fugitive Slave Act]
§ 31. [Arguments for the bill]
§ 32. [Arguments against the bill]
CHAPTER III.
[PRINCIPAL CASES FROM 1789 TO 1860.]
§ 33. [Change in character of cases]
§ 34. [The first case of rescue (1793)]
§ 35. [President Washington's demand for a fugitive (1796)]
§ 36. [Kidnapping cases]
§ 37. [Jones case (1836)]
§ 38. [Solomon Northup case (about 1830)]
§ 39. [Washington case (between 1840 and 1850)]
§ 40. [Oberlin case (1841)]
§ 41. [Interference and rescues]
§ 42. [Chickasaw rescue (1836)]
§ 43. [Philadelphia case (1838)]
§ 44. [Latimer case (1842)]
§ 45. [Ottoman case (1846)]
§ 46. [Interstate relations]
§ 47. [Boston and Isaac cases (1837, 1839)]
§ 48. [Ohio and Kentucky case (1848)]
§ 49. [Prosecutions]
§ 50. [Van Zandt, Pearl, and Walker cases (1840, 1844)]
§ 51. [Unpopularity of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850]
§ 52. [Principle of the selection of cases]
§ 53. [Hamlet case (1850)]
§ 54. [Sims case (1851)]
§ 55. [Burns case (1854)]
§ 56. [Garner case (1856)]
§ 57. [Shadrach case (1851)]
§ 58. [Jerry McHenry case (1851)]
§ 59. [Oberlin-Wellington case (1858)]
§ 60. [Christiana case (1851)]
§ 61. [Miller case (1851)]
§ 62. [John Brown in Kansas (1858)]
CHAPTER IV.
[FUGITIVES AND THEIR FRIENDS.]
§ 63. [Methods of escape]
§ 64. [Reasons for escape]
§ 65. [Conditions of slave life]
§ 66. [Escapes to the woods]
§ 67. [Escapes to the North]
§ 68. [Use of protection papers]
§ 69. [Fugitives disguised as whites: Craft case]
§ 70. [Underground Railroad]
§ 71. [Rise and growth of the system]
§ 72. [Methods pursued]
§ 73. [Colored agents of the Underground Railroad]
§ 74. [Prosecutions of agents]
§ 75. [Formal organization]
§ 76. [General effect of escapes]
CHAPTER V.
[PERSONAL LIBERTY LAWS.]
§ 77. [Character of the personal liberty laws]
§ 78. [Acts passed before the Prigg decision (1793-1842)]
§ 79. [Acts passed between the Prigg decision and the second Fugitive Slave Law (1842-1850)]
§ 80. [Acts occasioned by the law of 1850 (1850-1860)]
§ 81. [Massachusetts acts]
§ 82. [Review of the acts by States]
§ 83. [Effect of the personal liberty laws]
CHAPTER VI.
[THE END OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE QUESTION (1860-1865).]
§ 85. [The Fugitive Slave Law in the crisis of 1860-61]
§ 86. [Proposition to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law]
§ 87. [Propositions to repeal or amend the law]
§ 88. [The question of slaves of rebels]
§ 89. [Slavery attacked in Congress]
§ 90. [Confiscation bills]
§ 91. [Confiscation provisions extended]
§ 92. [Effect of the Emancipation Proclamation (1863)]
§ 93. [Fugitives in loyal slave States]
§ 94. [Typical cases]
§ 95. [Question discussed in Congress]
§ 96. [Arrests by civil officers]
§ 97. [Denial of the use of jails in the District of Columbia]
§ 98. [Abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia]
§ 99. [Regulations against kidnapping]
§ 100. [Repeal of the Fugitive Slave Acts]
§ 101. [Early propositions to repeal the acts]
§ 102. [Discussion of the repeal bill in the House]
§ 103. [Repeal bills in the Senate]
§ 104. [The repeal act and the thirteenth amendment]
§ 105. [Educating effect of the controversy]
APPENDICES.
[APPENDIX A.]
Colonial laws relative to fugitives
[APPENDIX B.]
National acts and propositions relative to fugitive slaves (1778-1854)
[APPENDIX C.]
National acts and propositions relating to fugitive slaves (1860-1864)
[APPENDIX D.]
List of important fugitive slave cases
[APPENDIX E.]
Bibliography of fugitive slave cases and fugitive slave legislation
CHAPTER I. LEGISLATION AND CASES BEFORE THE CONSTITUTION.
§ 1. [Elements of colonial slavery.]
§ 2. [Regulations as to fugitives (1640-1700).]
§ 3. [Treatment of fugitives.]
§ 4. [Regulations in New England colonies.]
§ 5. [Escapes in New England: Attucks case.]
§ 6. [Dutch regulations in New Netherlands.]
§ 7. [Escapes from New Amsterdam.]
§ 8. [Intercolonial regulations.]
§ 9. [Intercolonial cases.]
§ 10. [International relations.]
§ 11. [International cases.]
§ 12. [Relations with the mother country.]
§ 13. [Regulation under the Articles of Confederation (1781-1788).]
§ 14. [Ordinance for the Northwest Territory (1787).]
§ 15. [The Fugitive question in the Constitutional Conventions.]
§ 1. Elements of colonial slavery.—By the middle of the seventeenth century, the settlements made in America by the English, Dutch, and Swedes were arranged for the most part in a line of little colonies closely following the Atlantic coast. To the west, wide forests and plains, broken only by the paths of the Indian, stretched on to the Pacific; while long intervals of unpopulated country separated the colonists on the north from the French in Canada, and on the south from the Spaniards in Florida.
In all the colonies thus grouped together, the system of slavery had already become well established, and with its institution the question of the escape and return of the slaves had necessarily arisen. The conditions of the country, both physical and social, gave unusual facilities for flight. The wild woods, the Indian settlements, or the next colony, peopled by a foreign race, and perhaps as yet without firmly established government, offered to the slave a refuge and possibly protection. Escape, therefore, as a peculiar danger, demanded peculiar remedies. Though it is the purpose of this monograph not so much to study the detail of legislation or escape in the colonies as to deal with the period from 1789 to 1865, a slight sketch of the intercolonial laws and provisions which preceded and in part suggested later legislation will first be necessary.
Almost immediately after the introduction of slavery, in 1619, we begin to find regulations made by the colonists upon this subject. At first they applied solely to their own territory, but soon agreements were entered into among several colonies, or between a colony and the Indians or the French in Canada. These acts and agreements recognized not only the negro, as at a later period, but also the white and the Indian slave. There existed in some of the colonies of this time a peculiar class of white people, who received no wages, and were bound to their masters.[1] Usually these redemptioners were laborers or handicraftsmen, but sometimes they were persons of education who had committed a crime, and were sold according to law for a term of years, or for life. One of the class is curiously connected with the education of no less a person than George Washington. An unpublished autobiography of the Reverend John Boucher, who from 1760 to the Revolution was a teacher and preacher in Virginia, contains the following paragraph noticing the fact:—
"Mr. Washington was the second of five sons, of parents distinguished neither for their rank nor fortune.... George, who, like most people thereabouts at that time, had no other education than reading, writing, and accounts, which he was taught by a convict servant whom his father bought for a schoolmaster, first set out in the world as a surveyor of Orange County."[2]
§ 2. Regulations as to fugitives.—The earliest regulation upon this subject is found among the freedoms and exemptions granted by the West India Company, in 1629, "to all Patroons, Masters, or Private Persons" who would agree to settle in New Netherlands. The authorities promised to do all in their power to return to their masters any slaves or colonists fleeing from service.[3]
A little later, the Swedish colonists in Pennsylvania asked from their government the same privilege of reclaiming fugitives.[4] The preamble of an act against fugitives in East Jersey, in 1686, explains these provisions. They found that "the securing of such persons as Run away, or otherwise absent themselves from their master's lawfull Occasion," was "a material encouragement to such Persons as come into this country to settle Plantations and Populate the Province.[5] In many of the Southern colonies, as Maryland and South Carolina, so severe were the acts against this class of bound colonists that a runaway might be declared outlawed, and might rightfully be killed by any person.[6]