February 12, 1793 – President George Washington Signs into Law the First Fugitive Slave Act

The US Constitution, ratified in 1788, included the Fugitive Slave Clause, which declared that enslaved people who fled to states where slavery was illegal would be returned to their owners.

Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3:

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

The clause did not specify a means of enforcement however, so in 1793, the Fugitive Slave Act, signed by President George Washington (who owned more than 100 slaves) on this day in history, empowered slaveowners to seize runaway slaves, ordered state and federal authorities to help capture and return runaway slaves, and fined those who assisted runaway slaves. Moreover, states had no concurrent power to legislate on the subject. [See Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 41 U.S. 539, 612 (1842), declaring “The [Fugitive Slave] clause manifestly contemplates the existence of a positive, unqualified right on the part of the owner of the slave, which no state law or regulation can in any way qualify, regulate, control or restrain.”]

Slaves continued to try to escape however (odd, since slave owners insisted they were “content”). In fact, when Martha Washington’s favorite seamstress, Ona Judge, ran away, Washington was furious. He contended she “was brought up and treated more like a child than a Servant” and believed she must have been “seduced and enticed away.” (She ran away just before they were about to make a “gift” of her to another family member – one known for cruelty to boot – something I doubt they would have done to a “daughter.”)

In a letter the President fumed:

“. . . however well disposed I might be to a gradual abolition, or even to an entire emancipation of that description of People (if the latter was in itself practicable at this moment) it would neither be politic or just to reward unfaithfulness with a premature preference; and thereby discontent before hand the minds of all her fellow-servants who by their steady attachments are far more deserving than herself of favor.”

One of the advertisements posted for the return of Washington’s slave Ona Judge, Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser, Philadelphia, PA, May 27, 1796, via Library of Congress

As the Library of Congress reports:

Enslaved people ran away from bondage so often that slave owners placed some 200,000 ‘runaway slave’ ads in newspapers across the country in the decades before slavery ended following the Civil War.”

Slavery as an institution in the United States finally ended with the ratification of the 13th Amendment on December 6, 1865.