The War Before The War: How the Fugitive Slave Act tipped America toward The Civil War

In this edition of First Person One on One, Paul Schankman has a thoughtful conversation with noted historian Andrew Delbanco about his new book, "The War Before The War, Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War.
Delbanco makes the case that the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was the spark that finally lit the fuse leading to the American Civil War, by making it impossible for northerners to continue to ignore the harsh realities of slavery in the south.
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[@susanbauer2059]

Wow, the end. Sums it all up for me. Thank you for this!

[@krishnapatel2296]

ik i loved how they passionately made out at the end!!!🤩

[@TheStapleGunKid]

It's funny some people think the South was all about small government and states rights, yet the 1850 Fugitive slave act was probably the largest expansion of federal power over the states in US history up to that point.

[@YanraOnesja]

💯 this is definitely a major counter to that, yet it was in constitution!!

[@TheStapleGunKid]

@@YanraOnesja No you're thinking of the fugitive slave clause, not the fugitive slave act. The fugitive slave act went way beyond what the fugitive slave cause in the constitution required.

[@YanraOnesja]

@@TheStapleGunKid the act declared penalties for not following clause, right?

[@TheStapleGunKid]

@@YanraOnesja No it did way more than that. It required state authorities and even private cititzens to help enforce the fugitive slave clause, even though the clause only applied to the federal government. Furthermore, it created federal commissioners in every state who were assigned to rule on wheather or not someone caught by slave catchers was an escaped slave. These hearings had no burden of proof required, and no due process protections. Blacks who were accussed of being escaped slaves were not allowed to testify in their own defense. Worst of all, the law said these comissionors would get paid 10 dollars for rulling someone to be an escaped slave, but only 5 dollars for determining they were not an escaped slave. Can you believe that? The law actually paid federal officers more for ruling a certain way. Imagine standing trial before a judge knowing that judge will be paid twice as much if you are found guilty. That's something straight of up Soviet Union show trials. It's hardly surprsing that during the time the law was in effect, the federal comissioners ruled accussed fugitives guilty in over 90% of the hearings. The law basically let anyone from the South go up to any black man in the North, call that person an escaped slave, and then take him South into slavery with no questions asked. In addition to being the largest expansion of federal power ever, the Fugitive slave act was probably the most intensionally corrupt act ever passed by the federal government.

[@YanraOnesja]

@@TheStapleGunKid agreed; thanks for the that info.. the fugitive slave clause was probably needed to ratify the constitution but if it could have been agreed to without it, it could have saved the original architecture of the union and federation between the states, compared to empire, nation-state, that followed the civil war

[@javiercastro8466]

America is not perfect, but it is forever taking two steps forward and one step back in its effort to "form a more perfect union" that lives to the ideals it was founded on. Painful as it may be, America acknowledges its dark past. I note the difference with China, because today it took down the monument in Hong Kong to the lives lost at the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 in an effort to erase anything critical of the country by cracking down on any dissent to the central government or its leaders.

[@TroyBrownTV]

@7:00 The spirit of the master is abating and the spirit of the slave is rising from the dust, in other words Jefferson envisioned a future without slavery but no one knew how that future would come about. Which means Jefferson was not necessarily talking about abolition. He might have been talking about a black uprising. Sounds like he was afraid

[@writtwoodson6879]

It is disappointing that the Fugitive Slave Act was discussed without a robust discussion of the successful resistance to the act. The Christiana Resistance (Pennsylvania) and the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue (Ohio) are cases in point. The act was difficult to enforce because northerners did not cooperate with the enforcement of the act. In both of the cases cited here prosecution of persons helping fugitive slaves to escape were unsuccessful. History should explain how conditions became what they were or what they are. What really tipped the nation toward war was not the act itself, but the fact ineffectiveness of the act, which angered Southerners. In the Christiana case a slave holder lost his life trying to retrieve his former slaves. That angered, for one, John Wilkes Booth, who was a friend of one of the man's sons.

[@TroyBrownTV]

They didn’t think that terminating the international slave trade in 20 years would eradicate slavery. They had no idea that Haiti would overthrow the French. It just so happened that The Haitian Revolution coincided with the 20 year timeline. Once America had all that extra territory, and mass public fear of a black uprising, more money could be made with the intranational slave trade, which bombed once the international slave trade stopped, and made slaves and even more valuable commodity.

[@TroyBrownTV]

@20:50 oh you don’t know if reparation is the right word? LOL of course you don’t 😂

[@ivang321]

Yeah me too

[@perfectfan2006]

sort of like the vaccine and mask mandates of today

[@ranestorypictures1738]

whataboutism at its worst here!

[@TroyBrownTV]

@9:00 Jefferson could claim that his slaves were foisted upon him since he was a product of his environment… Well, he did claim that. He claimed it in the declaration of independence. That was The reason America declared independence. Britain offered a pathway for the slaves to free them selves, and Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal so that he could keep his N3gr0 slaves. But they added it out of the declaration