As the nation spends the week reviewing the Constitution, a
long-forgotten clause is drawing the attention of some Constitutional Law
professors and even a Supreme Court Justice. The Fugitive
Slave Act contained in Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution,
albeit mostly irrelevant, is still part of the veritable document.
“The Fugitive Slave Act is an embarrassment,” Supreme Court Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg said recently during an appearance at a Clinton
Foundation event in
Little Rock, Arkansas that attracted a crowd of 15,000.
Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act on September 18, 1850
as part of the 1850 Compromise, which was struck between the Southern slave
states and the Northern free states. The Act required that all slaves who
escaped to the North would be returned to their masters and mandated that
officials and residents of free states cooperate. It was nicknamed the
“Bloodhound Act” for the dogs used to track down the enslaved.
Law professor and author, Andre
Douglas Pond Cummings, described the hypocrisy of Southern lawmakers who typically
opposed government intervention but advocated for the government’s involvement
in the preservation of slavery by insisting that escaped men and women were
captured and returned to the mistreatment and injustice they had fled.
“It’s one of the most ironic sections of the Constitution
that exists,” Cummings said. “If you think about the South, the South is about
‘Don’t tread on me’…this provision says, ‘I don’t care if you’re a free state.’
It was an impingement of the South on the North.”
Today, awareness of the Fugitive Slave Act is increasing. In
many instances, Black Americans are shocked to learn that the Act is still
included in the Constitution.
On the 169th anniversary of the Fugitive Slave
Act critics are urging Black Americans and others disturbed to discover that
language about capturing slaves is still a part of the United States’ governing
document to harness their “political willpower” for change.
