| FUGITIVE JUSTICE: Runaways, Rescuers, and Slavery on Trial Subjects: Trials (Treason) -- United States; United States. Fugitive slave law (1850); Fugitive slaves -- Legal status laws etc. -- United States; Slavery -- Law and legislation -- United States; Antislavery movements -- United States; Loring Edward G. (Edward G; During the tumultuous decade before the Civil War, no issue was more divisive than the pursuit and return of fugitive slaves--a practice enforced under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. When free Blacks and their abolitionist allies intervened, prosecutions and trials inevitably followed. These cases involved high legal, political, and--most of all--human drama, with runaways desperate for freedom, their defenders seeking recourse to a "higher law" and normally fair-minded judges (even some opposed to slavery) considering the disposition of human beings as property. |