Fugitive Slave Essay

It’s no doubt that slavery was a shameful time in America. Families and individuals were torn and affected by this horrible time and it has left an awful mark in America’s history. Though slaves weren’t free, this didn’t stop them from trying as they didn’t give of the hopes of living in a place where they would one day be free.

To begin, the ‘fugitive’ slave was a problem that many slave owners didn’t approve of and needed to stop so ‘The Fugitive Slave Act’ was put into place. To put it simply, ‘The Fugitive Slave Act’ was a series of laws that made it illegal for anyone to assist an escaped slave on their way to freedom (1). The act made sure that if an escaped slave was spotted or seen that they needed to be turned into the authorities and returned to their owner down south, in which many Northerners disapproved of this act. This law also gave slave owners the right to organize a posse to recapture a runaway slave at anytime they wanted (1). The police and courts were forced to assist as well as citizens. Sadly, people who were caught helping slaves received jail time and were also forced to pay fines to the slave owner (1). In the beginning, authorities thought the Fugitive Slave Act would diminish the number of slaves wanting to run away, but still numbers didn’t really go down as slaves still had dreams of achieving freedom.

Reactions varied when it came to the issue of runaway slaves. Southerner’s of course thought runaway slaves were property and that they should rightfully be returned to where they came from, but the Northerners had a different opinion. Northerners viewed the practice of returning runaway’s as kidnapping. Some Northern citizens viewed this act as a disgusting

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excuse to kidnap already free blacks. Other citizens hated the fact that slave owners had the ability to reclaim slaves who could have already escaped long ago with a new life in the North. This resulted in many Northern states passing something called “personal liberty” laws, that protected fugitive slaves in a few different ways (1). One thing for sure about the two areas was, that their opinions of runaway slaves were completely opposite of each other!

Something else that is worth mentioning is how the Underground Railroad fit into this whole time period. The Underground Railroad played a very big role in how slaves escaped to freedom. While no one

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