The Fugitive Slave Law, and Its Victims.

The Fugitive Slave Law, and Its Victims.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 gave enslavers more power and threatened the liberty and safety of all Black persons living in free states. It denied the right to a trial by jury to those accused of being fugitives and required the U.S. government and private citizens to actively assist enslavers in capturing Black people accused of being fugitives, even on free lands. The above abolitionist pamphlet from 1856 provides a thirty-page list of those who had escaped from and then been returned to the South, along with a ten-page account of Margaret Garner, a fugitive who killed her daughter to prevent the baby from being enslaved. Lincoln consistently upheld the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave laws, but he reproached the lack of due process for the fugitives in the 1850 Act.

[May, Samuel Jr.].

Photograph by Vincent Dilio. Courtesy of David M. Rubenstein.

[1856]

[May, Samuel Jr.]. The Fugitive Slave Law, and Its Victims. [New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1856].

1809–1853 Early Years and Ambitions

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