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tHe fugitive slAve Act, september 18, 1850 U.S. Statutes at Large 9:462–65. None of the various parts of the so-called “Compromise of 1850” proved more controversial than the new fugitive slave act. For southerners, the price of continued union with the North and midwest was greater federal guarantees of the return of their runaway human property. expanding and increasing the legal process of the return (the rendition) of fugitive slaves, this act provided a whole new and stronger process. Instead of having owners or their agents (the slave catchers) appear before a judicial magistrate as required in the earlier Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, this act made the process of rendition an administrative procedure, not a judicial procedure. In this fashion, concerns about admitting slave testimony , for example, could not be raised because the process was strictly an administrative hearing and not a judicial inquiry. Congress ’ goal with this act was to streamline and make more efficient the return of fugitives out of free states and territories where they had been caught and to speed the process of their return to slave states or territories. To that end, this legislation established federal slave commissions to oversee the process of rendition. Section 5 of this act became a point of controversy in free states by authorizing the federal marshals to deputize the local populations in free areas to assist in slave recaptures. Potentially by this section, then, every adult male in free states and territories might have to become a slave catcher or, under Section 7, face a fine of up to $1,000 and six months in jail. Revealing the bias of the act and revealing the extent to which northerners and midwesterners were willing to go to accommodate southerners and placate their fears about their runaway property, Section 8 provided that if the commissions found that the accused runaway before them was indeed a runaway slave, then the commissions received a fee of $10; if, on the contrary , they found the accused runaway to be a free person, then the Documentary History of the American Civil War era 6 commissioners received $5. While intended to limit the problem of runaway slaves, this act actually increased the tension between and among the sections of the country because of its potential to make non–slave owners slave catchers, and because of its procedural uniqueness and biases. In large part because of this act, the larger political crisis of 1850 is called less and less a “compromise” by modern historians and more and more the “armistice” of 1850. Chap. lX.—An Act to amend, and supplementary to, the Act entitled “An Act respecting Fugitives from Justice, and Persons escaping from the Service of their Masters,” approved February twelfth, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the persons who have been, or may hereafter be, appointed commissioners, in virtue of any act of Congress, by the Circuit Courts of the united States, and Who, in consequence of such appointment, are authorized to exercise the powers that any justice of the peace, or other magistrate of any of the united States, may exercise in respect to offenders for any crime or offense against the united States, by arresting, imprisoning, or bailing the same under and by the virtue of the thirty-third section of the act of the twenty-fourth of September seventeen hundred and eighty-nine, entitled “An Act to establish the judicial courts of the united States” shall be, and are hereby, authorized and required to exercise and discharge all the powers and duties conferred by this act. Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That the Superior Court of each organized Territory of the united States shall have the same power to appoint commissioners to take acknowledgments of bail and affidavits, and to take depositions of witnesses in civil causes, which is now possessed by the Circuit Court of the united States; and all commissioners who shall hereafter be appointed for such purposes by the Superior Court of any organized Territory of the united States, shall possess all the powers, and exercise all the duties, conferred by law upon the commissioners appointed by the Circuit Courts of the united States for similar purposes, and shall moreover exercise and discharge all the powers and duties conferred by this act. Sec. 3. And be it further enacted, That the...

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