Abolition Of The Fugitive Slave Act

As the nation descended further into a split entity, with the issue of slavery at the forefront of the debate. The North and South needed to find a way to deal with their differences before the Union fell in shambles. The Compromise of 1850 was passed after long extensive debate in congress, the compromise was intended to settle the debate over how slavery would be controlled throughout the expanding nation. The Fugitive Slave Act was included in the compromise to satisfy southern states, that wanted to preserve the institution of slavery. The act allowed for run away slaves to be hunted down and returned to their past owners, even after they made it to the free states in the North. The Southerners wished to preserve their right to property, which is among the “Unalienable Rights”. Some northern states refuse to recognize the law which infuriated the South because they saw this as an explicit violation of the slave holder’s rights, this intensified the South’s urge to become a separate State.

Finally, in 1854, the first state high court declared the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 to be unconstitutional. The state of Wisconsin ruled in favor of abolitionist Sherman Booth, who had helped slave Joshua Glover escape to safety. The United States Supreme Court eventually overturned this ruling, declaring the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 to be constitutional and upholding the law. This political move frustrated the abolitionists, even those who considered themselves to be less extreme.

Slavery in the early United States was widespread and a cheap means of labor for the owners of plantations and it was also a major influence in the shaping of the United States. The United States in the three decades before the Civil War was flooded with various reform movements. Inspired by the religious revivals of the Second Great Awakening, these reform movements sought to improve or perfect human society by eliminating any evil the reformers believed was an affront to the moral and spiritual health of the nation. One of the key issues reformers attacked was the abolition of slavery. As late as the mid-1700s, most organized Western religions or denominations had failed to discourage their congregations from practicing slavery. Slaves

All of this new land was a major benefactor to the Market Revolution and widespread commerce, but it left a lot of problems regarding slavery. Thus, The Compromise of 1850 was passed. This act admitted California as a free state and abolished slave trade in the nation’s capital to please northerners. It also Installed the Fugitive Slave Act and formed a territorial government in the west with no slavery restrictions for southerners. This compromise was also referred to as the “Armistice of 1850” because it resolved issues for at least a little bit.

The Fugitive Slave Law or Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was a law passed by the United States Congress on September 18th. This Law stated that all people who had escaped from slavery must be returned to their owners. Keep in mind that in this situation slaves were traded and bought, sort of thought of back then what farm equipment is now. If people in the North, Where Slavery was not legal, hid or in some way helped slaves, they were breaking the law of the land. Law officials everywhere now had a duty to arrest anyone that was suspected of being a runaway slave, with very little evidence needed except the owners testimony of ownership. The suspected slave could not ask for a jury trial or testify on his or her own behalf.

The Compromise of 1850 was a desperate attempt to keep the southern states from seceding from the United States of America. While the goal was to keep the south from seceding, the new laws actually created more tension than it solved. Since the division in America over slave ownership had been holding a delicate balance with the states on both sides, the North and the South. When California petitioned to join the Union in 1849 as a free state, that delicate balance tipped and the conflict once again erupted. The Compromise consisted of 5 laws, admitting California as a free state, creating Utah and New Mexico territories with the question of slavery in each is determined by popular sovereignty, settling a Texas-New Mexico boundary dispute in the former’s favor, ending the slave trade in Washington D.C. and making it easier for southerners to recover fugitive slaves (History).

The Compromise of 1850 was 5 bills that the U.S. Congress passed in September 1850 to outline a 4-year plan about what to do with the territories aquired during the Mexican-American War. The Compromise addressed whether the territories would become slave states or free states.

The Compromise of 1850, as it was called, was a bundle of legislation that everyone could agree on. First, congressmen agreed that California would be admitted to the Union as a free state (Utah was not admitted because the Mormons refused to give up the practice of polygamy). The fate of slavery in the other territories, though, would be determined by popular sovereignty. Next, the slave trade (though not slavery itself) was banned in Washington, D.C. Additionally, Texas had to give up some of its land to form the New Mexican territory in exchange for a cancellation of debts owed to the federal government. Finally, Congress agreed to pass a newer and tougher Fugitive Slave Act to enforce the return of escaped slaves to the South.

To what extent did the Dred Scott Case and the Fugitive slave act and laws further divide the United States? Slavery has been an obstacle to America since the beginning of America’s independence. “… this incomplete revolution did produce, of course, was a fairly clear-cut division of the new nation into slaveholding and non-slaveholding states – all at the very same time when the foundations of a national government were being laid” . It was also geography and economic differences that continue to divide the North and South. The most important issue was slavery. The issue of slavery was pointed out many times by James Madison. The Dred Scott case presented three issues that have been debated throughout the country. The issues are 1. The citizenship of African Americans. “2. Status of slaves who had been held on free soil; and 3. The constitutionality of federal legislation prohibiting slavery in territories. ”

At the beginning, the Compromise of 1850 settled the dispute of the land from the Mexican Cession. The Compromise of 1850 pleased both the North and South. California was admitted as a free state and slave was ban in Washington D.C. as it favors the North. For the South, popular sovereignty decided if slavery was used in the western territories, along with the fugitive slave law passed. The Fugitive Slave Act 1850 allowed special government officials to arrest any person accused of being a runaway slave, as shown in Document B, a poster of capturing fugitive slaves. Additionally, the Kansas-Nebraska Act (Stephen Douglas) was passed. It undid the Missouri Compromise, having popular sovereignty in the western territories, therefore “to cease the agitation of the

The Compromise of 1850 finally put a stop to the four years of fighting between the slave states and free states. The Compromise also made agreement on the land and who owned it, that was taken during the American-Spanish War. That war ended in 1848. Texas and Mexico could not agree on the border of Texas, but the land between California and Texas was given to the United States. The sell and trade of slaves was stopped, but having slaves was

Slavery was one of the most horrific acts ever instilled on a race of people in world’s history. The history paints a truly horrific picture when blacks were stolen from their homelands, taken away from their families, enslaved and suffered from harsh punishments. The first opposition of practicing slavery in antebellum America takes its origins from the beginning of nineteenth century. The most recognizable abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison, George Thompson, David Walker and Frederic Douglass were the first who unfolded the antislavery debates in transnational ways. Their persistent eagerness and appeal to public opinion helped to sow seeds of abolishing slavery in America.

This stayed true, until the forming of California came into discussion. California demanded to keep its long borders, due to the oil, which was blocked by the Sierra Nevada, of the Rocky Mountains (OI). Congress would allow California to keep its unusual shape, but the Missouri Compromise’s lateral line went through the middle of California and gave Henry Clay an idea of a new compromise (OI). The Compromise of 1850 was relief for the nation (Doc. 3). Its provisions included Utah and New Mexico territories being decided if they were free or slave states by popular sovereignty (Doc. 3). California would enter the Union as a free state, border disputes between New Mexico and Texas was settled and slave trade, but not slavery, was banned in the nation’s capital, Washington D.C. (Doc. 3). One other decree was enacting the Fugitive Slave Law, which meant that escaped slaves in the North would be returned to their owner, and even Northerners were required to help find escapees (Doc. 3). If people were found to have been harboring slaves, they were faced with either a $1,000 fine or 6 months in prison

U.S. victory in Mexico and the ensuing 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo gave the United States expanded territory in the southwest. This left the significant question of what was to be done with the new land. Free Soilers and Northern Whigs opposed the expansion of slavery, but the Southerners wanted more states to become slave states in order to further their cause. Eventually, Congress accepted Henry Clay’s Compromise of 1850, which stated that California would enter as a free state if Mexico and Utah were carved from the Mexican Cession. Furthermore, this compromise

Henry Clay stepped in May 1850 and passed The Compromise of 1850 which consists of five laws which dealt with slavery issues. During that year, this was an attempt to solve the tensions over slavery by claiming it could stop slavery or even reduce the influence of southern states on this issue whenever California entered the Union as a free state and New Mexico and Utah became territories where slaves would be decided by popular sovereignty, along with the acceptance of New Mexico and receiving $10 million from the federal government. Some people recognized the Compromise to be bring peace, others viewed it as a way to touch deeper conflicts over slavery. For the most part, the compromise began to come apart leading to brining horrors of slavery