Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T20:08:18.900Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - The End of Toleration

The Collapse of the Fugitive Slave Act in the Contested Region

from Part III - 1850–1860

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2019

Robert H. Churchill
Affiliation:
University of Hartford, Connecticut
Get access

Summary

The chapter explores the collapse of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 in the Contested Region. The overland Underground Railroad networks in the region were quickly being bypassed by the railroad transportation in the 1850s. Nevertheless, the high-profile fugitive rescues in the Free Soil Region convinced slave catchers that their efforts were better focused farther south, and as a result slave catching accelerated in the Contested Region in the middle and late 1850s. This led to a series of confrontations in which the behavior of the slave catchers and accompanying US Marshals was egregiously violent. Attempts by local and state authorities to bring the assailants to justice were frustrated by federal judges who fully sanctioned their recourse to the violence of mastery. These cases rendered the region’s conditional toleration of slave catching untenable. The result was a striking shift in the culture of violence as the region embraced the outright defiance that had long characterized Free Soil communities. As a consequence, in the late 1850s, the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act collapsed outside the narrow strip of territory that comprised the Borderland.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • The End of Toleration
  • Robert H. Churchill, University of Hartford, Connecticut
  • Book: The Underground Railroad and the Geography of Violence in Antebellum America
  • Online publication: 16 December 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108773997.008
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • The End of Toleration
  • Robert H. Churchill, University of Hartford, Connecticut
  • Book: The Underground Railroad and the Geography of Violence in Antebellum America
  • Online publication: 16 December 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108773997.008
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The End of Toleration
  • Robert H. Churchill, University of Hartford, Connecticut
  • Book: The Underground Railroad and the Geography of Violence in Antebellum America
  • Online publication: 16 December 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108773997.008
Available formats
×