Part 2 of Week 8

The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 S. M. Africanus. The Fugitive Slave Law. Hartford, Connecticut, 1850. Rare Book and Special Collections Division. (3-5) This controversial law allowed slave-hunters to seize alleged fugitive slaves without due process of law and prohibited anyone from aiding escaped fugitives or obstructing their recovery. Because it was often presumed that a black person was a slave, the law threatened the safety of all blacks, slave and free, and forced many Northerners to become more defiant in their support of fugitives. S. M. Africanus presents objections in prose and verse to justify noncompliance with this law. Anthony Burns--Capture of A Fugitive Slave This is a portrait of fugitive slave Anthony Burns, whose arrest and trial in Boston under the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 incited riots and protests by white and black abolitionists and citizens of Boston in the spring of 1854. The portrait is surrounded by scenes from his life, including his sale on the auction block, escape from Richmond, Virginia, capture and imprisonment in Boston, and his return to a vessel to transport him to the South. Within a year after his capture, abolitionists were able to raise enough money to purchase Burns's freedom. The unfairness of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 along with the Mexican War are what finally drove David Thoreau to his civil disobedience protest. He did not pay his taxes and was thrown into jail as his way to protest in a non-violent manner. He did not want to be a part of a government who advocated these injustices.