Fugitive Slave Act
Runaway recapture mandate
The Fugitive Slave Act refers to either of two U.S. federal laws (1793 and 1850) requiring the return of escaped enslaved people to their enslavers, even from free states.
The 1850 act was especially notorious, compelling Northern citizens to assist in captures and denying the accused any right to trial.
It inflamed abolitionist sentiment and deepened sectional conflict leading to the Civil War.
- Dred Scott decision1857 ruling denying Black citizenship
- Compromise of 1850Five bills balancing slave-state interests
- freedom seekerOne pursuing liberation
- federal marshalFederal law enforcement officer
- John BrownRadical antislavery insurrectionist
bloodhound · Missouri Compromise · Kansas-Nebraska Act · Mason-Dixon Line · Henry Clay · rendition · slavery · Civil War · Sojourner Truth · chattel slavery · manhunt · harbor · bondage · escape · plantation · capture · chains · runaway
- Abolitionismabolitionists, abolitionist movement, anti-slavery, antislavery, abolitionism
- 1840s-1850sOregon Trail, California Gold Rush, Mexican-American War, Manifest Destiny, Underground Railroad
- Abolitionabolitionists, Frederick Douglass, abolitionist movement, Underground Railroad, Emancipation Proclamation
- Antebellum Americaantebellum era, Compromise of 1850, sectionalism, states' rights, Kansas-Nebraska Act
- Historic LawsHomestead Act, Missouri Compromise, Kansas-Nebraska Act, Chinese Exclusion Act, Indian Removal Act
- legal historylegal history, medieval law, Roman law, Roman jurisprudence, common law
Fugitive Slave ActEmancipation Proclamation
Executive order freeing Confederate slaves
Thirteenth Amendment · emancipation · abolition · manumission · Freedmen's Bureau
Fugitive Slave ActUnderground Railroad
Covert abolitionist escape network
sanctuary · safe house · free soil · Canada · Oberlin
Fugitive Slave Actabolitionism
Movement to end oppression
Underground Railroad · antislavery movement · John Brown's raid · Harriet Tubman · sanctuary