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Encyclopedia entry: Fugitive Slave Act
- Article from:
- The Oxford Companion to United States History
- Author:
Copyright© The Oxford Companion to United States History 2001, originally published by Oxford University Press 2001. (Hide copyright information)
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Fugitive Slave Act
(1850).Drafted by Senator James Y. Mason of Virginia and the product of months of contentious debate in the Senate, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was signed into law by President Millard
Fillmore
as part of the
Compromise of 1850
. Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, an ardent critic, denounced the law as unconstitutional, but Daniel
Webster
, in a famous speech on 7 March, supported it as part of a larger political effort to preserve the Union. The southern senators John C.
Calhoun
and Jefferson
Davis
doubted that the law would achieve its purpose, but they did not oppose it. Organized opposition to the law in the North faded after the summer of 1851. ...