The general significance of the long controversy in regard to fugitive slaves can best be understood by tracing the development as a sectional issue of the question at the bottom of it, namely, the obligation to restore fugitives to their masters. The creation of a line dividing the free North from the slaveholding South in the early years of our national history, and the enactment of the first Fugitive Slave Law, by which the general government assumed a certain responsibility for runaways, led to the opening of the question. From that time on, the steadily increasing number of escapes, together with the spread of the underground system, which made these escapes almost uniformly successful, kept the question open. Operations along the secret lines constantly caused aggravation in the South; and the pursuit of passengers, mobs and violence were results widely witnessed in the North. The other questions between the sections were subject to compromise, but party action could not control the workings of the Underground Railroad. The stirring sights and affecting stories with which the North became acquainted through the stealthy migration of slaves were well adapted to make abolitionists rapidly, and the consequence was more aggravation on both sides. The practice of midnight emancipation in Northern states during the early years was accompanied, not unnaturally, with the formulation and statement of the principle of immediatism in neighborhoods where underground methods were familiar. Thus the way was prepared for Garrison and his talented coworkers, whose eloquent tongues and pens could no more be controlled by pro-slavery forces than could the Underground Railroad itself. Agitation reacted upon the Road and increased its activity; this caused counter agitation by Southerners in and out of Congress until a more rigorous Fugitive Slave Law was secured.
The Compromise of 1850 failed to reconcile the sections: Northern men despised the Fugitive Slave Law, and displayed greater zeal than ever before in aiding runaway slaves. Thus, in the later stages of the controversy, as from its beginning, the fugitive was a successful missionary in the cause of freedom. Personal liberty laws were passed by the free states to defend him; Uncle Tom's Cabin was written to portray to the world his aspirations for liberty and his endeavors to secure it; John Brown devised a "subterranean pass way" to assist him, as a part of the great scheme of liberation that failed at Harper's Ferry. One of the chief reasons for withdrawing from the Union assigned by the seceding states was the bad faith of the North in refusing to surrender fugitives. At the outbreak of the Civil War large numbers of slaves sought refuge with the Union forces, the government soon found it impracticable to restore them, and disavowed all responsibility for them in 1862. By the Proclamation of Emancipation slavery was abolished within the area of the disloyal states, and the controversy became merely formal, the loyal slave states striving to maintain an abstract right based by them upon the Constitution. In 1864, however, they were forced to yield, and the fugitive slave legislation was repealed. The year following witnessed the cancellation of the fugitive slave clause in the Constitution by the amendment of that instrument. In view of all this it is safe to say that the Underground Railroad was one of the greatest forces which brought on the Civil War, and thus destroyed slavery.
[APPENDIX A]
CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISIONS AND NATIONAL ACTS RELATIVE TO FUGITIVE SLAVES, 1787-1850
Fugitive Clause in Northwest Ordinance of 1787. [Chapter II, p. 20.]
1787, July 13. Art. VI. "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said Territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted; provided, always, 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." Read first time, July 11, 1787. Passed July 13, 1787.—Journals of Congress, XII, 84, 92.
Fugitive Clause in the Constitution. [Chapter II, p. 20.]
1787, Sept. 13. Art. IV, § 2. "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."—Revised Statutes of the United States, I, 18.