“Fugitive Slave Act of 1793,”

Black History Month – February 12, 1793

Before today, I thought there was only one kind of slavery, the kind African Americans suffered through for 400 years in the United States. That particular form of slavery is known as “Chattel Slavery.” The other forms are: Forced Labor – Describes all types of coerced work that an individual must provide against his or her will. Bonded or Debt Labor – Describes slavery in which an individual is compelled to work in order to repay a debt. Sex Slavery – Describes women, men or children that are exploited in the commercial sex industry. Child Slavery – Describes all child labor obtained from individuals under the age of 18 through the means of force, deception or coercion and Domestic Servitude which describes how workers become slaves when their employer uses force, fraud or coercion to control or convince an employee that they have no choice but to continue working. At first I was like, well chattel slavery encompasses almost every aspect of the other types of slavery except debt labor. Straight up, slavery means you ain’t getting paid. However there is a very “big” difference in chattel slavery and the other types of slavery. Its the only one which mandates that your children and all the generations of your children, will also be slaves.

Chattel slavery is the oldest form of slavery and existed before written history. A person could become enslaved from the time of their birth, capture, or purchase. In the beginning, the earliest widespread form of slavery in the New World was bonded or debt slavery. More often known as indentured service, indenturees usually enter into an indenture for a specific payment or other benefit, or to meet a legal obligation. Usually after several years, indentured servants were given their freedom, and occasionally plots of land. Nonetheless you did have people who would not abide by their contracts and as soon as the sun went down, left and disappeared. By the mid 1600’s, all that began to change and the new norm became at the discretion of the contract holder, ” servant for life.” Although a lot of blacks who made their way to the New World were very successful after indenture, the majority were not. Most stayed on after the indentured service was over, as did their progeny. Still they were free and could walk away at any time. Owners of commerce could not depend on a labor force who may leave at anytime. So in 1639 Virginia started changing the laws.

1640 — 1660: The Critical Period: Custom to Law when Status Changed to “Servant for Life”

• 1639/40 – The General Assembly of Virginia specifically excludes blacks from the requirement of possessing arms
• 1642 – Black women are deemed tithables (taxable), creating a distinction between African and English women.
• 1662 – Blacks face the possibility of life servitude. The General Assembly of Virginia decides that any child born to an enslaved woman will also be a slave.

1660 — 1680: Slave Laws Further Restrict Freedom of Blacks and Legalize Different Treatment for Blacks and Whites

• 1667 – Virginia lawmakers say baptism does not bring freedom to blacks. The statute is passed because some slaves used their status as a Christian in the 1640s and 1650s to argue for their freedom or for freedom for a child. Legislators also encourage slave owners to Christianize their enslaved men, women and children.
• 1668 – Free black women, like enslaved females over the age of 16, are deemed tithable. The Virginia General Assembly says freedom does not exempt black women from taxation.
• 1669 – An act about the “casual killing of slaves” says that if a slave dies while resisting his master, the act will not be presumed to have occurred with “prepensed malice.”
• 1670 – Free blacks and Native Americans who had been baptized are forbidden to buy Christian servants.
• 1672 – It becomes legal to wound or kill an enslaved person who resists arrest. Legislators also deem that the owner of any slave killed as he resisted arrest will receive financial compensation for the loss of an enslaved laborer. Legislators also offer a reward to Indians who capture escaped slaves and return them to a justice of the peace.

1680 — 1705: Slave Laws Reflect Racism and the Deliberate Separation of Blacks and Whites. Color becomes the Determining Factor. Conscious Efforts to Rigidly Police Slave Conduct.

• 1680 – Virginia’s General Assembly restricts the ability of slaves to meet at gatherings, including funerals. It becomes legal for a white person or person to kill an escaped slave who resists capture. Slaves also are forbidden to:
  • arm themselves for either offensive or defensive purposes. Punishment: 20 lashes on one’s bare back.
  • leave the plantation without the written permission of one’s master, mistress or overseer. Punishment: 20 lashes on one’s bare back.
  • “…lift up his hand against any Christian.” Punishment: 30 lashes on one’s bare back.
• 1691 – Any white person married to a black or mulatto is banished and a systematic plan is established to capture “outlying slaves.”
  • If an outlying slave is killed while resisting capture, the owner receives financial compensation for the laborer.
  • Partners in an interracial marriage cannot stay in the colony for more than three months after they married.
  • A fine of 15 pounds sterling is levied on an English woman who gives birth to a mulatto child. The fine is to be paid within a month of the child’s birth. If a woman cannot pay the fine, she is to serve five years as an indentured servant. If the mother is an indentured servant, she faces an additional five years of servitude after the completion of her indenture.
  • A mulatto child born to a white indentured servant will serve a 30-year indenture.
  • A master must transport an emancipated slave out of Virginia within six months of receiving his or her freedom.
• 1692 – Slaves are denied the right to a jury trial for capital offenses. A minimum of four justices of the peace hear evidence and determine the fate of the accused. Legislators also decide that enslaved individuals are not permitted to own horses, cattle and hogs after December 31 of that year.
• 1705 – Free men of color lose the right to hold public office.
• 1705 – Blacks — free and enslaved — are denied the right to testify as witnesses in court cases.
• 1705 – All black, mulatto, and Indian slaves are considered real property.
• 1705 – Enslaved men are not allowed to serve in the militia.
• 1705 – In An act concerning Servants and Slaves, Virginia’s lawmakers:
  • Increase the indenture of a mulatto child born to a white woman to 31 years.
  • Determine that if a white man or white woman marries a black partner, the white individual will be sent to jail for six months and fined 10 pounds current money of Virginia.
  • Determine that any minister who marries an interracial couple will be assessed a fine of 10,000 pounds of tobacco.
  • Determine that any escaped slave who is unwilling or unable to name his or her owner will be sent to the public jail.

On February 12, 1793, just 10 years after the American Revolution, Congress signs the “Fugitive Slave Act of 1793,” which essentially turns the Virginia statues into the law of the land. It also adds additional provision’s for escaped slaves. Before then if you got away, you was usually good to go. There was no incentive for you to be arrested by the law or returned to the slave owner.

SEC. 3. And be it also enacted, That when a person held to labor in any of the United States, or in either of the Territories on the Northwest or South of the Ohio river, under the laws thereof, shall escape into any other part of the said States or Territory, the person to whom such labor or service may be due, his agent or attorney, is hereby empowered to seize or arrest such fugitive from labor, and to take him or her before any Judge of the Circuit or District Courts of the United States, residing or being within the State, or before any magistrate of a county, city, or town corporate, wherein such seizure or arrest shall be made, and upon proof to the satisfaction of such Judge or magistrate, either by oral testimony or affidavit taken before and certified by a magistrate of any such State or Territory, that the person so seized or arrested, doth, under the laws of the State or Territory from which he or she fled, owe service or labor to the person claiming him or her, it shall be the duty of such Judge or magistrate to give a certificate thereof to such claimant, his agent, or attorney, which shall be sufficient warrant for removing the said fugitive from labor to the State or Territory from which he or she fled.

SEC. four. And be it further enacted, That any person who shall knowingly and willingly obstruct or hinder such claimant, his agent, or attorney, in so seizing or arresting such fugitive from labor, or shall rescue such fugitive from such claimant, his agent or attorney, when so arrested pursuant to the authority herein given and declared; or shall harbor or conceal such person after notice that he or she was a fugitive from labor, as aforesaid, shall, for either of the said offences, forfeit and pay the sum of five hundred dollars. Which penalty may be recovered by and for the benefit of such claimant, by action of debt, in any Court proper to try the same, saving moreover to the person claiming such labor or service his right of action for or on account of the said injuries, or either of them.

It would be another 92 years on December 6th, 1865, before African American’s would be legally free from the evil’s of chattel slavery.