Fugitive Slave Act

Cultural  

1. A law passed as part of the Compromise of 1850, which provided southern slaveholders with legal weapons to capture slaves who had escaped to the free states. The law was highly unpopular in the North and helped to convert many previously indifferent northerners to antislavery.

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Example Sentences

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was something Thoreau not just railed against but acted against, smuggling several enslaved people to Canada.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 26, 2026

He’s a really interesting case because when the Fugitive Slave Act was put in place in 1850, he was a lawyer in Boston.

From Slate • Jul. 10, 2025

King County, originally named in 1852 for Vice President William Rufus de Vane King, a slave owner and advocate for the Fugitive Slave Act, was renamed for the civil-rights hero in 2005.

From Seattle Times • Jan. 15, 2024

The first lacked teeth until the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and the second left matters up to Congress, at least until the 1850s.

From Salon • Dec. 16, 2023

Three years earlier, President Washington had signed into law the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.

From "In the Shadow of Liberty" by Kenneth C. Davis