Question

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 made it legal to do which of the following?
A) Prevent an African American from testifying in his or her own defense.
B) Help a slave escape to a free state.
C) Become a free person simply by crossing the border into a free state
D) Join the Free-Soil Party speak out in favour of abolition
E) Execute any slave who was proved to have escaped from his or her owner

Answer 1

Hint: The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was adopted by Congress on 18 September 1850. The action required the return of slaves to their masters despite their being in free condition. It also made the federal government responsible for the location, return and prosecution of slaves who were fleeing.

Complete answer:
The Fugitive Slave Acts is a couple of federal legislation allowing fleeting enslaved people to be captured and sent home on United States territories. The first Fugitive Slavic Law, propagated by Congress in 1793, allowed local authorities to capture and return their owners' escapees and punished anyone who helped in their flight. Widespread opposition to the 1793 bill resulted in the adoption of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act that added provisions on rushing and imposed much harder sentences for their imprisonment. Most of the most notorious legislation of the early 19th century was the Fugitive Slave Acts.

The Act was one of the most contentious aspects of the compromise of 1850 which made the North more afraid of conspiring for the slaves. It needed all escaping slaves to be returned to the slaver until they were captured and free state officials and civilians to work together. Since the dogs used to trace the slave refugee, abolitionists called it "Bloodhound Bill."

The law expressly specified that before the committee investigating the lawsuit, African Americans convicted of having escaped slaves should not testify. People had the right, not under the Fugitive Slave Act, to join the Free-Soil Party. The US government has never adopted a bill to allow escaping slaves to be executed.

The Act has helped the country's increasing polarisation with respect to slavery and is one of the roots of the civil war. It is the most disliked and publicly broken piece of federal law in the history of the country.

Note: The U.S. Congress passed the confiscation law in August 1861 which prevented enslaves from re-slavery for captured fugitives. While the Union's policies of confiscation and military emancipation largely replaced the Fugitive Slave Act, only officially in June 1864 was the Fugitive Slave Act abolished.