§ 104. The repeal act and the thirteenth amendment.—The act was a simple one; it runs as follows:—
"Chap. CLXVI. An Act to repeal the Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen hundred and fifty, and all Acts and parts of Acts for the rendition of Fugitive Slaves.
"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That sections three and four of an act entitled 'An act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters,' passed February twelve, seventeen hundred and ninety-three, and an act entitled 'An act to amend, and supplementary to, the act entitled An act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters, passed February twelve, seventeen hundred and ninety-three,' passed September, eighteen hundred and fifty, be and the same are hereby repealed.
"Approved, June 28, 1864."
The whole structure of statutes, decisions, and judicial machinery which had been erected to compel by national authority the people of free States to share in the responsibility for slavery, was at last overthrown. But the constitutional obligation remained; so long as a slave anywhere existed, the neighboring States were bound to pursue him, if he ran away, and might by statute provide for his return. The final step was therefore to complete the work of legal emancipation by the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution. On January 31, 1865, Congress voted to submit the following article to the States for their approval and ratification: "Art. XIII. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction." On December 18, 1865, the Secretary of State proclaimed that the amendment had been approved by twenty-seven of the thirty-six States, and was consequently adopted.
§ 105. Educating effect of the controversy.—The first act of 1793 was imperfect. It did not provide a national machinery whereby its provisions could be executed, and many of the States by means of the personal liberty laws refused to lend their officers and jails for the work. All efforts to amend the law were unsuccessful until the great compromise of 1850 gave opportunity to pass a second act.
This new measure remedied certain defects in the first statute, and was therefore more satisfactory to the slave-owners. As soon as it began to be executed, however, its provisions were found to be so severe that the trials and rescues it occasioned served only to educate the people to the evils of slavery by bringing its effects close to them. Thus, far from compelling the North to acquiesce in the system, it greatly increased the number of Abolitionists. The arraying of the North and South against each other in the Civil War intensified public sentiment upon the question, and led more and more to a loose execution of the law. It was found impracticable to return slaves to disloyal masters, and a law to prevent any such return was the next step toward the doing away of the whole system. Next came the question of the duty and power of the general government, within its exclusive jurisdiction: in 1862 all responsibility was disavowed. By this time the force of the law extended only to the loyal slave States, and the force of public opinion in 1864 withdrew the last statutory safeguard of slavery under the Constitution. A change in the text of the Constitution finally took away the force of the clause on which the return of fugitives was based.
We can see, at this distance, how clearly slavery was doomed to destruction, from the time the two sections first made it an issue in 1820; but there was no relation arising out of slavery except the territorial question which did so much as the fugitive slave controversy to hasten the downfall of the system. The contrast between the free principles of democratic government and human bondage was forced upon the attention of the North by the pursuit of fugitives in their midst. Yet without national machinery for the recapture of runaways the institution could not have long been maintained. There is no evidence that the North was profoundly stirred by the horrors of slavery before 1850; it was only when the North was called upon, in the Territories, and through the Fugitive Slave Law, to give positive aid to the system that the antislavery movement grew strong. Fugitive slaves and fugitive slave laws helped to destroy slavery.
APPENDIX A. COLONIAL LAWS RELATIVE TO FUGITIVES.
The precise text is quoted in each case. The figures in brackets refer to paragraphs in the text. The sign 0 indicates that the full text is to be found in the reference cited.