The fugitive slave laws were laws passed by the United States Congress in 1793 and 1850 to provide for the return of slaves who escaped from one state into another state or territory.
Read more about Fugitive Slave Laws: Pre-colonial and Colonial Eras, 1785 Attempt, Northwest Ordinance of 1787, Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, Civil War-era Legal Status of Fugitive Slaves
Famous quotes containing the words fugitive slave, fugitive, slave and/or laws:
“What should concern Massachusetts is not the Nebraska Bill, nor the Fugitive Slave Bill, but her own slaveholding and servility. Let the State dissolve her union with the slaveholder.... Let each inhabitant of the State dissolve his union with her, as long as she delays to do her duty.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Is this what all these soldiers, all this training, have been for these seventy-nine years past? Have they been trained merely to rob Mexico and carry back fugitive slaves to their masters?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“...I’m a slave to this leaf in a diary that lists what I must do, what I must say, every half hour.”
—Golda Meir (1898–1978)
“The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant’s economy is a coarse symbol of the soul’s economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)