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:
“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)
“Has anyone ever told you that you overplay your various roles rather severely, Mr. Kaplan? First you’re the outraged Madison Avenue man who claims he’s been mistaken for someone else. Then you play the fugitive from justice, supposedly trying to clear his name of a crime he knows he didn’t commit. And now you play the peevish lover stung by jealously and betrayal. It seems to me you fellows could stand a little less training from the FBI and a little more from the Actors Studio.”
—Ernest Lehman (b.1920)
“Tyranny produces two results, exactly opposite in character, and which are symbolized in those two great types of the slave in classical times—Epictetus and Spartacus. The one is hatred with its evil train, the other meekness with its Christian graces.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“Nearest to all things is that power which fashions their being. Next to us the grandest laws are constantly being executed. Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)