feb 12, 1793 - The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793

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Congress enacted the first fugitive slave law. It required every state, including those that forbade slavery, to forcibly return slaves who had escaped from other states to their owners.

Most Northern states soon abolished slavery and chose not to enforce the 1793 law. Many of them enacted laws ensuring fugitive slaves a jury trial. Some enacted measures, which were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1842, barring state officials from aiding in the capture of runaway slaves. These so-called personal liberty laws required slave owners and fugitive hunters to produce evidence that their captives were truly fugitive slaves.

Wide disregard of fugitive slave law enraged Southern lawmakers, resulting in the passage of a second fugitive slave law as part of the Compromise of 1850, aimed at averting a Civil War between the North and South.

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