Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"The most influential abolitionist tract was Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), the best-selling novel and play by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Outraged by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 (which made the escape narrative part of everyday news), Stowe emphasized the horrors that abolitionists had long claimed about slavery. Her depiction of the evil slave owner Simon Legree, a transplanted Yankee who kills the Christ-like Uncle Tom, outraged the North, helped sway British public opinion against the South, and inflamed Southern slave owners who tried to refute it by showing some slave owners were humanitarian. It inspired numerous anti-Tom novels, several written and published by women."--Sholem Stein |
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The Fugitive Slave Act or Fugitive Slave Law was passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave-holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers.
The Act was one of the most controversial elements of the 1850 compromise and heightened Northern fears of a "slave power conspiracy". It required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be returned to their masters and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate. Abolitionists nicknamed it the "Bloodhound Bill," for the dogs that were used to track down runaway slaves.
The Act contributed to the growing polarization of the country over the issue of slavery, and is considered one of the causes of the Civil War.
See also
- Ableman v. Booth
- Emancipation Proclamation
- Fugitive Slave Law Convention of 1850, Cazenovia, New York
- Fugitive slave laws
- Prigg v. Pennsylvania
- Slave Trade Acts
- Underground Railroad
Incidents involving fugitive slaves
- Christiana Riot, 1851
- Joshua Glover, 1854
- Jerry Rescue, 1851
- Jane Johnson, 1855
- William Still
- Anna Maria Weems, 1855
