On February 12, 1793, Congress passed the first Fugitive Slave Act entitled, “An act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters.” On September 18, 1850, the second Fugitive Slave Act entitled, “An Act to amend, and supplementary to the act” of 1793, was approved by President Millard Fillmore. These two pieces of legislation brought together the duties of state governments, the role of the federal government, and the expectations of citizens who lived in free states. More importantly, the Acts challenged the ways in which the legal system grappled with the notion of freedom.
The essential difference between the 1793 and 1850 Act was the role of the federal government. The second Act authorized the federal government to develop a more robust process for apprehending and returning fugitive slaves. The process involved commissioners, appointed by federal judges, to issue warrants to slave owners and slave catchers. U.S. Marshals and Deputy Marshals had the power to arrest suspected fugitive slaves. Superior Courts were established to decide status and to fine or jail individuals who concealed fugitive slaves. It encouraged citizens to aid and assist in the efficient execution of the Act. If there was an attempt to rescue a slave, the Marshal was authorized to hire as many people as possible to capture the fugitive and the cost would be incurred by the federal government. Lastly, if a person of African descent was accused of being a fugitive slave, she could not testify on her own behalf. These measures magnified the power of the legal system to coordinate federal and state entities, to promote the interests of individual slave owners and slave-owning states, and to promulgate an ideology of inferiority as justification for denying people of African descent freedom.
The intent of the Fugitive Slave Act was clear. Nonetheless, the Act brought into sharper focus the reach of law, and the tension between protection and freedom as set out in the Declaration of Independence. The founders did not consider enslaved Africans as equals endowed with unalienable rights. The efforts to firm up the fugitive slave law were thus not surprising. Yet, the community’s opposition to the legislation seemed to surprise some lawmakers. For example, in Boston, the cases of Shadrach Minkins and Thomas Sims outraged pro-slavery advocates, while the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 angered abolitionists.
These events, along with others, motivated J.R. Tyson of Pennsylvania to deliver a passionate speech to the House of Representatives on February 28, 1857. Even though Tyson claimed “to deplore the existence of slavery,” in his speech he defended the Fugitive Slave Laws. For this reason, Tyson’s speech is particularly noteworthy for revealing the ideologies that bolstered obedience to the Fugitive Slave Acts. Tyson’s speech presents three interesting articulations, which I will examine in greater detail below. Put simply, the first focuses on the rationale for why states designated as “free” states should uphold the federal law. The second underscores law as a means of protection. The third urges that the law need not bolster freedom, liberty, or justice for people of African descent. Instead, the law must seek to oppress them for the sake of national honor and policy.
Tyson’s first articulation lays out the historical scope of settler colonialism and its connection to the institution of slavery. He states that “hereditary labor and service is a system that existed by law in all the colonies. It is a system which continued in the south, one to which the habits of large districts have been conformed, and under which vast interests have been growing for more than two centuries. The continuance of this system, and the repose of the communities in which it retains a footing, should not be disturbed by the external agency of ignorant, rash, or hostile intermeddlers. The system is intertwined with their social feelings and their religious instincts.” Tyson urges both the north and south to return to the compromise measures of 1850 as they constitute the bulwarks of the Union. He claims that “disregarding the Act not only opposes justice and Christian benevolence but also threatens the social and political prospects of the country.”
Tyson’s second articulation underscores an important element of the law, that is, protection. He argues that “the law protects not only the master and the country but also the runaway slave.” In this sense, the scope of protection must be understood in layers as Tyson connects it to justice, liberty, and freedom. With regard to protecting the master, it is clear that the slave is a financial investment. The Act of 1850 states, “when a person held to service or labor in any state or territory of the United States, the person or persons to which such services or labor may be due, or his, her or their agent or attorney, duly authorized…may pursue and reclaim such fugitive.” This statement highlights the end, which is service or labor to the extent that there is a contract between the master and the government. In addition, Tyson’s statements about protection also address the colonist’s free reign to oppress people of African descent. He insists that “the reasoning and thoughtful citizen who looks to the law for his own protection, would not ask the question, whether the runaway sought to be reclaimed was a fugitive from justice or a fugitive from labor? These two classes of fugitives stand side by side in the Constitution; and the law makes no distinction between them, except in the manner of their delivery. The institution is not merely identified with the habits and interests of millions of people, it is also essential to the prospect of a rising power.” Consequently, the northern states have a duty to return enslaved Africans to their southern brethren for the sake of political union.
According to Tyson, to strengthen the union the law has a duty to protect the master’s claim and uphold justice by returning his property, not only because he paid for it, but also because the master and the southern states rely upon African labor for their survival. Furthermore, the northern states recognized that “fraternal accord, public peace and private affection, political union and social unity, were far higher considerations than merely abstract sentiment in favor of general liberty, however lofty, praiseworthy and noble.” The law that made the African a slave in the first place can and must keep her enslaved. Therefore, any debate or question about liberty, justice, and freedom for the slave is immaterial. Freedom is not something that belongs to an enslaved person. She is a fugitive from justice or a fugitive from labor.
Considering Tyson’s remarks about the law protecting the slave, a few questions arise. In what way does such a law protect a person who has been held against their will? How does one substantiate bondage as a perpetual condition, upheld by law, for the slave’s protection? If the law protects fugitive slaves by advocating bondage and human suffering in perpetuity, is this protection or a pretense for oppression? Tyson asserts that “inquiry is seldom made whether the runaway was well or ill treated by the master whose protection he has deserted, or about his own capacity to take care of himself. They exchange a life, free from care and want, for one of nominal freedom truly, but of real and unmitigated wretchedness. Africans are barbarous and it is an incontrovertible fact that the African, whether bond or free, has been elevated in character and improved by his residence among a religious, an educated, and a free people. The descendants of Africa, for their security and happiness, are a dependent race.” Considering this perspective, the slave should desire perpetual bondage for the sake of her protection rather than freedom.
The matter of protection leads to Tyson’s third articulation. He claims that “freedom and liberty are abstract notions that have practical exceptions.” The exceptions target people of African descent to the degree that freedom and liberty are inapplicable to them. In contrast, White people are free to deny or take freedom away from Africans due to their inferior status. Tyson contends that it is a fact “the negro is naturally inferior physically and metaphysically. One may make society a level table-land, but you cannot prevent the African negro from sinking in intellectual stature below the height of the European. It is necessary to withhold from the negro more than a measured or qualified freedom.” This is a given. Therefore, “it is unjust to the character of the country and injurious to the social and moral standing of the southern States to confound the system of slavery with a condition of law. The northern states must deliver back to their southern brethren fugitives from labor and service as the Constitution enjoins.”
Within the context of the Fugitive Slave Acts, ideology presents itself as truth and the arbiters of the law used it to perpetuate injustice and oppression rather than to defend freedom. As a result, the measures had three unintended consequences. First, the measures distorted the notions of liberty and justice. Second, the vehement efforts to strip freedom away from the oppressed led to the oppressors being enslaved to ideology. Third, the fugitive slave’s quest to be free challenged the entire colonial edifice. When the fugitive slave reflected upon her condition and made the decision to flee, she pushed the bounds of the colonial interpretation of justice and liberty. Further, her action brought into view her humanity, the potency of freedom itself, and exposed the legal system as a tool of oppression, not protection.
The Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850, in conjunction with J.R. Tyson’s speech, illuminate a perennial burden that the United States has yet to escape. The burden is anchored by the legal system’s failure to secure protection, justice, and freedom for every human being. In the 21st century, the legal system continues to deny many African Americans the right to exist as human beings. They are prevented from standing at the ballot box; they are denied entry into the boardroom; they are harassed in the classroom; and they are ignored in the hospital room. Their freedom to exist is constantly under assault. If we, as a society, continue to dismiss the dehumanizing legacy of the American legal system, ideology, oppression, and injustice will prevail. Will we be forced, once again, to ask what is freedom?
LaChanda Davis
LaChanda Davis is currently lecturer at San Francisco State University and California State University, East Bay. She teaches critical thinking, introduction to philosophy, and ethics. Her area of interest is Platonic philosophy. One of her forthcoming projects examines the notions of katharsis and aporia and the ways in which they contribute to the practice of philosophy.
Slavery existed legally in Africa until the 1980s (Mauritanie) and still exists there informally for around 2% of the population. In Haiti too there are still child slaves (the “restaveks” (“reste-avec”s, or stay-overs)).
Thank you for this thought-provoking essay, Dr. Davis.
I recently taught Douglass’s 1854 editorial “Is It Right and Wise to Kill a Kidnapper?” as the first text in an introductory philosophy course. The occasion for his essay was the case of Anthony Burns, who was arrested in Boston under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. A crowd attempted unsuccessfully to rescue Burns; a guard, James Batchelder, was killed in the process, and Douglass argues that deadly violence was justified.
This text worked very well to raise questions about justice, law, and violence, in connection with other texts by King and Plato.
Hi Richard. Thank you so much, especially for the reference! I’ve been revisiting Plato’s works to think through the problematic of justice through the process of purification. Writing this piece has helped me pose more questions for sure. Thank you again.
I find it baffling that with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 in place, people in the south would consider secession as an option and why some in the north would consider southern secession as something to oppose. How long would this Fugitive Slave Act survive without the representation of the south in the Senate. And how would their cherished slavery survive without northern cooperation in returning their slaves?