The issues of slavery and the rights of states to decide for themselves the slave question dominated domestic politics in the first half of the nineteenth century. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 essentially grew out of existing state and federal laws regarding the capture of escaped slaves. Colonial-era laws in various Southern states rewarded persons who captured fugitive slaves and punished those who sheltered or concealed them. The freeing of slaves in the North and the opening up of new territories in the West made fugitive slaves a national issue. Because not all Northern states and new territories had fugitive slave laws, runaway slaves often found haven there and thus enraged Southern slaveholders.
The first Fugitive Slave Act, passed by Congress in 1793, stipulated that slave owners or their agents could arrest and return escaped slaves from any territory or state, provided that proof be given to a magistrate that the apprehended blacks were indeed fugitives. Anyone hindering the arrest or providing haven to fugitive slaves was also liable for arrest.
In the first half of the nineteenth century, as opposition to slavery in the North grew, the Fugitive Slave Act began to lose its bite. Abolitionists and other sympathetic Northerners ignored the 1793 Act, and activists established a secret network of safe havens for fugitive slaves, stretching from the Deep South to Canada: the Underground Railroad.
