Info Brief: Slavery and Federalism

Prior to the ratification of the 13th Amendment, the U.S. Constitution left the issue of slavery—in other words, whether to allow slavery or not—largely to the states. Even so, supporters and opponents of slavery battled in Congress and inside of the states over the issue of enslaved people who had escape to freedom. These were largely battles over federalism.

On the one hand, slaveholders argued that the Constitution granted the national government broad power to enact “Fugitive Slave Acts,” requiring free states to aid slaveholders in retrieving alleged fugitives. On the other hand, opponents of slavery countered that the Constitution’s system of federalism left states with considerable authority to resist national efforts to force states to grant this aid.

This Info Brief features passages covering two main flashpoints in this debate over slavery and federalism: the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and the Massachusetts Personal Liberty Law of 1855.

Both passages are co-authored by Laura Edwards and Kurt Lash.

Part of the so-called congressional “Compromise of 1850,” this second federal Fugitive Slave Act aggressively extended the provisions of the original 1793 Act.

Law enforcement officials were required to arrest people suspected of escaping enslavement on as little as a claimant’s sworn testimony of ownership. The Commissioner before whom the fugitive from slavery was brought for a hearing was compensated $10 if he found that the individual was proven a fugitive, but only $5 if he determined the proof to be insufficient. In addition, any person aiding a fugitive by providing food or shelter was subject to six months’ imprisonment and a $1,000 fine.

The Act was broadly condemned in the North and prompted multiple instances of violent resistance. Although the Supreme Court upheld Congress’s power to pass such laws in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, Northern states resisted enforcement of the law on their soil. Wisconsin, for example, invoked the compact theory of the Constitution and insisted it retained the right to “nullify” what they believed was an unconstitutional law.

In response to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, a number of northern states passed “personal liberty” laws, which sought to protect their citizens from false arrest as “runaway slaves.” These laws guaranteed the writ of habeas corpus, the right to a jury trial, and other procedural devices that not only protected the accused, but also made it difficult (and costly) for slave owners to prove their case in court.

These personal liberty laws infuriated Southern states, which insisted that these laws were intended to thwart the operation of the Fugitive Slave Act and amounted to a betrayal of the original constitutional “compact.” Abolitionists in the North, on the other hand, insisted that personal liberty laws simply took advantage of the federalist structure of the Constitution and the rights of the people in the northern states to protect their citizens.

Federalism remained a key component of the Republican platform (expressly so in the 1860 platform) and was often invoked by the moderate Republicans in the Reconstruction Congress as an important principle of constitutional liberty.