Chapter V

, p. 120.

[867] _Ibid._

The inefficiency of the first Fugitive Slave Act was early recognized, and the period during which it was in existence witnessed many attempts at amendment. It is possible that the failure of Washington to recover his slave in 1796 furnished the occasion for the first of these.[868] A motion was made, December 29, 1796, looking toward the alteration of the law.[869] Apparently nothing was done at this time, and the matter lapsed until 1801, when it came up in January and again in December of that year.[870] In the month last named a committee was appointed in the House, which reported a bill that gave rise to considerable debate. This bill provided that employing a fugitive as well as harboring one should be punishable; and that those furnishing employment to negroes must require them to show official certificates and must publish descriptions of them. It is reported that Southern members "considered it a great injury to the owners of that species of property, that runaways were employed in the Middle and Northern states, and even assisted in procuring a living. They stated that, when slaves ran away and were not recovered, it excited discontent among the rest. When they were caught and brought home, they informed their comrades how well they were received and assisted, which excited a disposition in others to attempt escaping, and obliged their masters to use greater severity than they otherwise would. It was, they said, even on the score of humanity, good policy in those opposed to slavery to agree to this law."[871] Northern members did not accept this view of the fugitive slave question, and when the proposed bill was put to vote January 18, 1802, it failed of passage.[872] The division on the measure took place on sectional grounds, all the Northern members but five voting against it, all the Southern members but two for it.[873]

[868] William Goodell, _Slavery and Anti-Slavery_, pp. 231, 232.

[869] _House Journal_, Fourth Congress, Second Session, p. 65; _Annals of Congress_, pp. 1741, 1767.

[870] _House Journal_, Sixth Congress, Second Session, p. 220; _Annals of Congress_, p. 1053; _House Journal_, Seventh Congress, First Session, p. 34; _Annals of Congress_, p. 317.

[871] _House Journal_, Seventh Congress, First Session, p. 125; _Annals of Congress_, pp. 422, 423.

[872] The vote stood 46 to 43.

[873] _House Journal_, Seventh Congress, First Session, pp. 125, 128; _Annals of Congress_, pp. 423, 425.

For the next fifteen years Congress appears to have given no consideration to the propriety of amending the law of 1793. Its attention was mainly occupied by the abolition of the slave-trade, the agitation preliminary to the War of 1812, and the events of that War.[874] At length, in 1817, a Senate committee reported a bill to revise the law, but it was never brought up for consideration. In the same year a bill was drafted and presented to the House, on account of the need of a remedy for the increased insecurity of slave property in the border slave states. Pindall, of Virginia, seems to have been its originator; at any rate he was the chairman of the committee that reported the proposition. The interest in the discussion that resulted was increased, doubtless, by two petitions, one from the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, asking for a milder law than that in existence, the other from the Baltimore Quakers, seeking some security for free negroes against kidnapping.

[874] W. E. B. Du Bois, _The Suppression of the American Slave Trade_, pp. 105-109.

The House bill as presented in 1817 secured to the claimant of a runaway the right to prove his title before the courts of his own state, and thus to reclaim his human property through requisition upon the governor of the state in which it had taken refuge; it was further provided that the writ of habeas corpus was to have no force as against the provisions of the proposed act. The objections made to the measure are worth noting. Mr. Holmes, of Massachusetts, disapproved of the effort to dispense with the writ of habeas corpus, stating that such action would remove a safeguard from the liberty of free colored people. Mr. Mason, of the same state, declared against trial by jury, which somebody had proposed, insisting that "juries in Massachusetts would in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred decide in favor of fugitives, and he did not wish his town (Boston) infected with the runaways of the South." Mr. Sergeant, of Pennsylvania, sought to amend the bill by making the judges of the state in which the arrest occurred the tribunal to decide the fact of slavery. And, last of all, Mr. Whitman, of Massachusetts, opposed the provision making it a penal offence for a state officer to decline to execute the act; a point, it should be remarked, that came into prominence in the famous case of Prigg _vs._ Pennsylvania in 1842. Notwithstanding these efforts to modify the bill, it was carried without change, January 30, 1818, by a vote of 84 to 69. In the Senate the bill was not passed without alteration. After a vote to limit the act to four years, the upper House made amendments requiring some proofs of the debt of service claimed other than the affidavit of the claimant, and then passed the act on March 12. The lower House did not find the modified bill to its liking, and therefore declined to consider it further.[875]

[875] _House Journal_, Fifteenth Congress, First Session, pp. 50, 86, 182, 186, 189, pp. 193, 198; _Annals of Congress_, pp. 446, 447, 513, 829-831, 838, 840, 1339, 1393. _Senate Journal_, Fifteenth Congress, First Session, pp. 128, 135, 174, 202, 227, 228, 233; _House Journal_, p. 328; _Annals of Congress_, pp. 165, 210, 259, 262, 1339, 1716; T. H. Benton, _Abridgment of the Debates of Congress_, Vol. VI, pp. 35, 36, 37, 110; M. G. McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, pp. 21-23; Lalor's _Cyclopædia_, Vol. II, pp. 315, 316; Schouler, _History of the United States_, Vol. III, p. 144.

This failure to secure a new general fugitive slave act by no means prevented those interested from renewing their endeavors in that direction. Before the close of the year the House was prompted to bestir itself again by a resolution of the Maryland legislature asking protection against citizens of Pennsylvania who were charged with harboring and protecting fugitive slaves.[876] That the allegation was well founded cannot be doubted. Evidence has already been adduced to show that numerous branches of the Underground Railroad had begun to develop in southeastern Pennsylvania as early at least as the year 1800.[877] A month after the presentation of the Maryland resolution a committee of the House was appointed. This committee reported a bill without delay, but again nothing was accomplished. The framing of the Missouri Compromise at the next session of Congress, in 1820, gave opportunity for the incorporation of a fugitive recovery clause, to enable Southern settlers in Missouri and other slave states to recapture their absconding slaves from the free territory north of the new state.[878] The fugitive clause in the Ordinance of 1787 had insured the same right for slave-owners taking land along the western frontier of Illinois.

[876] McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_, p. 23.

[877]