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The Continental Congress
The Fugitive Slave Law was passed by Congress on September 18, 1850 in an attempt to find a compromise between Northern and Southern interests. The law mandated that free slaves captured by authorities had to be returned to their owners and required that all citizens comply in the capture of an escaped slave. The law was wildly reviled and disobeyed by abolitionists, and the increased tension it caused between abolitionists and slave-owners was one of the factors that led to the Civil War. In his speech, Douglass harshly criticizes the Fugitive Slave Law, lamenting that it has codified the subjugation of slaves into American legal institutions.
The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 Quotes in What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?
The What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? quotes below are all either spoken by The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 or refer to The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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2. The Internal Slave Trade
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The minister of American justice is bound by the law to hear but one side; and that side, is the side of the oppressor. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. Let it be thundered around the world, that, in tyrant-killing, king-hating, people-loving, democratic, Christian America, the seats of justice are filled with judges, who hold their offices under an open and palpable bribe, and are bound, in deciding in the case of a man’s liberty, to hear only his accusers!
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3. Religious Liberty
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The fact that the church of our country, (with fractional exceptions), does not esteem “the Fugitive Slave Law” as a declaration of war against religious liberty, implies that that church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, and not a vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love and good will towards man. … A worship that can be conducted by persons who refuse to give shelter to the houseless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and who enjoin obedience to a law forbidding these acts of mercy, is a curse, not a blessing to mankind.
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The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 Term Timeline in What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?
The timeline below shows where the term The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 appears in What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
2. The Internal Slave Trade
Even more than the slave trade itself, Douglass lambasts the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which has elevated slave-hunting from a state to a federal affair. Because of...
(full context)
3. Religious Liberty
Douglass calls the Fugitive Slave Act a violation of “Christian Liberty” and condemns church authorities for refusing to condemn it. He...
(full context)
