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:—