Section 1 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the persons who have been, or may hereafter be, appointed commissioners, in virtue of any act of Congress, by the Circuit Courts of the United States, and Who, in consequence of such appointment, are authorized to exercise the powers that any justice of the peace, or other magistrate of any of the United States, may exercise in respect to offenders for any crime or offense against the United States, by arresting, imprisoning, or bailing the same under and by the virtue of the thirty-third section of the act of the twenty-fourth of September seventeen hundred and eighty-nine, entitled "An Act to establish the judicial courts of the United States" shall be, and are hereby, authorized and required to exercise and discharge all the powers and duties conferred by this act.
Section 2 And be it further enacted, That the Superior Court of each organized Territory of the United States shall have the same power to appoint commissioners to take acknowledgments of bail and affidavits, and to take depositions of witnesses in civil causes, which is now possessed by the Circuit Court of the United States; and all commissioners who shall hereafter be appointed for such purposes by the Superior Court of any organized Territory of the United States, shall possess all the powers, and exercise all the duties, conferred by law upon the commissioners appointed by the Circuit Courts of the United States for similar purposes, and shall moreover exercise and discharge all the powers and duties conferred by this act.
Section 3 And be it further enacted, That the Circuit Courts of the United States shall from time to time enlarge the number of the commissioners, with a view to afford reasonable facilities to reclaim fugitives from labor, and to the prompt discharge of the duties imposed by this act. Section 4 And be it further enacted, That the commissioners above named shall have concurrent jurisdiction with the judges of the Circuit and District Courts of the United States, in their respective circuits and districts within the several States, and the judges of the Superior Courts of the Territories, severally and collectively, in term-time and vacation; shall grant certificates to such claimants, upon satisfactory proof being made, with authority to take and remove such fugitives from service or labor, under the restrictions herein contained, to the State or Territory from which such persons may have escaped or fled.
Section 9 And be it further enacted, That, upon affidavit made by the claimant of such fugitive, his agent or attorney, after such certificate has been issued, that he has reason to apprehend that such fugitive will he rescued by force from his or their possession before he can be taken beyond the limits of the State in which the arrest is made, it shall be the duty of the officer making the arrest to retain such fugitive in his custody, and to remove him to the State whence he fled, and there to deliver him to said claimant, his agent, or attorney.
Section 10 And be it further enacted, That when any person held to service or labor in any State or Territory, or in the District of Columbia, shall escape therefrom, the party to whom such service or labor shall be due, his, her, or their agent or attorney, may apply to any court of record therein, or judge thereof in vacation, and make satisfactory proof to such court, or judge in vacation, of the escape aforesaid, and that the person escaping owed service or labor to such party.
On its face, the new law simply set out to enforce the U. Constitution, specifically Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3, which declared that slaves did not become free simply by escaping to a free state and thus stipulated their return to their lawful masters. Precluding testimony by the alleged fugitives themselves, the act also compelled otherwise disinterested private citizens, upon threat of fine or imprisonment, to assist in their capture and return of the suspects.
With annual documented cases of runaways amounting to 1, or fewer out of a total slave population that stood at 3. Escapes had mounted as the increasingly dynamic abolitionist contingent urged slaves to take flight, and, beyond that, the most compelling and credible indictments of slavery came not from northern whites acting on principle, but from runaways like Frederick Douglass and Henry Highland Garnet, who had experienced its cruelties themselves. It was no mere coincidence that both Douglass and Garnet had made their escapes from Maryland.
Historians Joseph R. Hummel and Barry R. Because the worst flight risks were also the most expensive to replace, able-bodied male slaves became a notably less attractive investment in the border states. As dramatically higher prices in the Deep South enticed more and more slaveholders in states like Delaware and Maryland to sell off their human property, there was little reason to expect their future representatives in Washington to maintain their attachments to the institution.
Yet if the Fugitive Slave Act of was expected to bolster slavery in any concrete fashion, there is little evidence it actually did. If the commissioner ruled in favor of the white man, the commissioner received ten dollars.
If he ruled against the slaveholder, the commissioner earned only five dollars. Many abolitionists claimed that this portion of the Fugitive Slave Law was a means to bribe the commissioners.
Between and , African Americans appeared before federal commissioners. Of those people, African Americans were forced into slavery in the South. The commissioners allowed only eleven people to remain free in the North. Thousands of African Americans fled to Canada. Some people who had been free for their entire lives left the country.
Abolitionists challenged the Fugitive Slave Law's legality in court, but the United States Supreme Court upheld the law's constitutionality in The Fugitive Slave Acts were congressional statutes passed in and that permitted for the seizure and return of runaway slaves who escaped from one state and fled into another Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, n.
This act dictated that fugitive slaves were neither allowed to testify on their own behalf, nor were they allowed to have a trial by jury Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, n. Furthermore, special commissioners were given concurrent jurisdiction with U. Between and , fugitive slaves appeared before these special commission, and of those, were returned to slavery in the South Ohio History Connection, n.
The severity of this statute inspired an increased number of abolitionists, the development of a more efficient Underground Railroad , and the establishment of new personal-liberty laws in the North Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, n.
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