THE  COMPROMISE OF 1850 & THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT

 

Eliza’s Flight.  A Scene from Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  Written by Miss M. A. Collier, Music by E. J. Loder (Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1852).

One of the most affecting and exciting episodes in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s best-selling novel was the slave Eliza’s escape across the ice-strewn Ohio River.  Based on an actual incident, Eliza’s flight was the dramatic high point in the many stage adaptations of the novel and helped spread popular sympathy for the plight of the fugitive slave.

 

 

“The Christiana Tragedy,” in William Still, The Underground Railroad (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1872).

In Christiana, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, 1851, Maryland slaveholder Edward Gorsuch was killed in a gun fight while attempting to capture his runaway slaves.  In the confusion, all the fugitives safely escaped.  The episode raised the stakes, showing black fugitives would fight to the death rather than be enslaved.

The book from which this illustration is reproduced was written by the African American leader of the Philadelphia Underground Railroad.  In the 1870s he was a reform Republican fighting against the corruption of the party machine.

 

 

Arrest Warrant for Two Whites & Eighteen Blacks, Lancaster, September 11^th, 1851.

From the large crowd of neighbors drawn to the scene, two whites and eighteen blacks were arrested for refusing the federal marshal’s order to assist in the capture of the fugitive slaves.  They were taken to federal court in Philadelphia and were charged with treason – in the face of armed resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act, the South wanted not prison but hangings.  A vigorous defense by Thaddeus Stevens convinced the jury to find them innocent.

 

 

“Death Rather than Slavery,” in Charles C. Coffin, Building the Nation: Events in the History of the United States (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1883).

All fugitive slave cases challenged the myth of the happy and contented slave, perhaps none so dramatically as Margaret Garner in 1856.  Fleeing from Kentucky slavery with her children, she was cornered by her pursuers in Cincinnati.  In her attempted murder-suicide, she killed one child and wounded another before her captors could stop her.  Garner’s desperate decision of death rather than slavery shocked the nation, and over a century later inspired the novel Beloved by Toni Morrison.

 

 

“Marshall’s Posse with Burns Moving down State Street,” in Charles Emery Stevens, Anthony Burns: A History (Boston: John P. Jewett Company, 1856).

Fugitive slave Anthony Burns was apprehended in Boston in 1854, the second fugitive to be captured in the city.  Local blacks and white abolitionists were not about to give him up without a struggle.  A prison guard was accidentally killed in a black-led assault on the prison where Burns was held. The streets were crowded with protesters and mass meetings drew huge crowds to protest slave catching in Boston.  At enormous expense, Burns was returned to slavery in the company of the local militia and a contingent of federal troops sent by President Franklin Pierce.