The Wider Significance of Michigan’s Fugitive Slave Cases

The Wider Significance of Michigan’s Fugitive Slave Cases R. J. M. Blackett (bio) In history, as in politics, we are always searching for defining moments and precipitous events—the consequences of which help us make sense of local developments. That is surely the case of the dramatic rescues of escaping slaves that occurred in Michigan in the late 1840s. Many have argued that those rescues led to the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. The escapes from Kentucky and the attempted recaptures in Michigan, the argument goes, created such political turmoil that proponents of slavery insisted on a more effective law of rendition—one that would guarantee the return of escapees. While not dismissing or questioning that connection, I would suggest the need for a broader appraisal to include the many escapes from other parts of the Upper South that occurred in the latter half of the 1840s, escapes that had a profound effect on the politics of the period leading to the enactment of the 1850 law. We also need to look at what events provided the political means to pass the 1850 law. The search for a more effective law began almost before the ink dried on the original fugitive slave law passed in 1793. Addressing the conflicts over slavery, particularly the rights of Black people, the law relied on state officials for its enforcement. It quickly became apparent, especially to slaveholding interests, that the law lacked teeth. Immediately, some sought a stronger law. A 1796 motion in the US House of Representatives called for changes, but no action was taken. The issue was revisited five years later. This time, Southerners condemned the employment of runaway slaves in the North. Northern representatives saw no need to take up the issue, and the bill failed. In 1817, a US Senate committee reported a bill to revise the 1793 law, but it was never taken up. A House bill from the same year had some interesting features that anticipated the 1850 law. It addressed the growing insecurity of slave property in the Border States. Under the proposed law, slaveholders could go to court in their state and prove their ownership of an escapee. With that stamp of legal approval, they could reclaim the runaway through the requisition on the governor of the state in which the formerly enslaved had [End Page 83] taken refuge. Under the bill, habeas corpus would have no force. There would be no trial by jury. It would be a penal offense for a state office to decline to enforce the law. The bill passed 84–69. The Senate agreed with its aims but imposed a limit of four years on its application and required proof of ownership by the enslaver. The House, however, rejected these modifications and, as a result, the bill died. Another bill was offered in both the House and Senate in 1821, in the wake of the Missouri Compromise, but it never came to a vote. Lastly, following the escapes from Kentucky and clashes over their rescue in Michigan and escape to Canada, the Kentucky General Assembly called on the federal government to open negotiations with Great Britain on an extradition treaty.1 While the slaveholding interests failed to enact a more stringent federal law that would guarantee the return of absconding slaves, Northern states had added insult to injury by passing a series of personal liberty laws that further curtailed the effectiveness of the 1793 law. It complicated matters that the enslaved were openly challenging the law by their actions. Wilbur Siebert once labeled escapees as “missionaries in the cause of freedom.” They were the ones who first initiated, and later heightened, the crisis over slavery by fleeing those who claimed them. As one freedom seeker told a reporter after arriving in Canada, he intended to make his feet feel for Canada so as to make his former owner feel it in his pocket. Although there are no hard figures on the amount of escapees, the evidence suggests the numbers rose dramatically in the 1840s. As Andrew Butler of South Carolina pointed out to his colleagues in the Senate in 1850, Kentucky had lost an estimated $30,000 worth...

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