What ICE Should Have Learned from the Fugitive Slave Act

"The law was heavily weighted, in that it offered a fee of ten dollars to magistrates who ruled that an individual should be returned to slavery, but only five to those who ruled that the person should remain free. Even more controversially, it charged federal commissioners with enforcing the law, and they worked with loosely regulated agents, who made it their own business to track down fugitives and return them to slavery."

"During the tumultuous period that preceded the Civil War, the United States passed a series of bills that came to be collectively known as the Compromise of 1850. The Compromise allowed for California's entry into the Union as a free state, and outlawed the slave trade (but not slavery itself) in the District of Columbia. The most controversial element of the legislation, however, was the Fugitive Slave Act."

The Compromise of 1850 admitted California as a free state and outlawed the slave trade in Washington, D.C., while leaving slavery legal there. The Fugitive Slave Act created a federal bureaucracy to return escaped enslaved people and empowered commissioners and agents to capture fugitives. The law financially incentivized returns, offering ten dollars to magistrates who ordered return versus five dollars to those who ruled for freedom. Slave catchers developed reputations for rogue operations and free Black northerners lived under the terror of seizure and deportation. What was meant as a remedy and salve became an incendiary event that lit the fuse to civil war.

Read at The New Yorker