The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, drafted by Senator James M. Mason of Virginia, was written to close the gap left by the 1793 law after Prigg v. Pennsylvania in 1842 ruled that states could not be forced to spend local resources on recapture. This episode examines its mechanics: federal commissioners who could deputize any bystander, a $1,000 fine for refusing to help, six months in prison for giving food or shelter, no jury, no testimony from the accused and suspended habeas corpus. Commissioners received $10 for certifying a person as a slave and $5 for releasing them, and slave prices in border states rose 15 to 30 percent after passage.

Instead of compliance, the law produced resistance. Reverend Luther Lee of Syracuse published his address and admitted smuggling 30 people to Canada, Boston juries refused to convict the rescuers of Shadrach Minkins, and Vermont passed a personal liberty law. In the Joshua Glover case, the Wisconsin Supreme Court freed abolitionist Sherman Booth and declared the act unconstitutional before Roger Taney’s Supreme Court overruled it. The episode ends with Benjamin Butler’s contraband ruling at Fort Monroe, the Confiscation Acts of 1861 and 1862, and the act’s formal repeal in 1864.

• Before 1850, armed posses from the South were driven out of places like Cass County, Michigan, while local officials looked away.
• The federal government deployed troops, marines and artillery in Boston in 1854 to march Anthony Burns to a ship.
• Northern states argued states’ rights against the federal law while Southern leaders demanded federal supremacy, a reversal of their usual positions.
• Canada’s Black population grew from about 40,000 to 60,000 between 1850 and 1860, and New York City lost nearly 2,000 Black residents in five years.
• In Pittsburgh, hundreds of men formed armed vigilance units sworn to fight rather than be taken.