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The Fugitive Slave Act or Fugitive Slave Law was a law passed by the 31st United States Congress on September 18, 1850, [1] as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern interests in slavery and Northern Free-Soilers. The Act was one of the most controversial elements of the 1850 compromise and heightened Northern fears of a slave power ...
Texas' annexation as a state that tolerated slavery had caused tension in the United States among slave states and those that did not allow slavery. The tension was partially defused with the Compromise of 1850, in which Texas ceded some of its territory to the federal government to become non-slave-owning areas but gained El Paso.
None of the area would be left as an unorganized or organized territory, which would avoid the question of slavery in the territories. Changing Texas's borders was proposed by Senator Thomas Hart Benton in December 1849 or January 1850. Texas's western and northern boundaries would be the 102nd meridian west and the 34th parallel north.
"Uncle Dick and Aunt Angie, Davilla, Texas, slaves of Jack's grandparents" (DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University) The history of slavery in Texas began slowly at first during the first few phases in Texas' history. Texas was a colonial territory, then part of Mexico, later Republic in 1836, and U.S. state in 1845.
Although the settled portion of Texas was an area rich in cotton plantations and dependent on slave labor, the territory acquired in the Mountain West did not seem hospitable to cotton or slavery. [11] As part of the Compromise of 1850, California was admitted as a free state without a slave state being admitted; California's admission also ...
A year later, he supported the Compromise of 1850 to promote harmony among the states, which "incurred the permanent wrath of pro-slavery elements". [2] By 1850, Houston was being discussed as a possible candidate for president of the United States, but his marriage to Eliza Allen (his first wife) took him out of the presidential race. [16]
The Pennsylvania Abolition Society, led in part by Benjamin Franklin, was founded in 1775, and Pennsylvania began gradual abolition in 1780. In 1783, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled in Commonwealth v. Jennison that slavery was unconstitutional under the state's new 1780 constitution.
The demand from the South for more effective Federal legislation led to the second fugitive slave law, drafted by Senator James Murray Mason of Virginia, grandson of George Mason, and enacted on September 18, 1850, as a part of the Compromise of 1850.