“ FUGITIVE SLAVE LAWS, a term applied in the United States to the Statutes passed by Congress in 1793 and 1850 to provide for the return of negro slaves who escaped from one state into another or into a public territory. A fugitive slave clause was inserted in the Articles of Confederation of the New England Confederation of 1643, providing for the return of the fugitive upon the certificate of one magistrate in the jurisdiction out of which the said servant fled—no trial by jury being provided for. ”

“ An agreement of the sort was necessary to persuade the slave-holding states to union, and in the Federal Constitution, Article IV., Section II., it is provided that “no person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour may be due.” ”

“ It has been argued that the Underground Railroad delayed the final decision of the slavery question, inasmuch as it was a “safety valve”; for, without it, the more intelligent and capable of the negro slaves would, it is asserted, have become the leaders of insurrections in the South, and would not have been removed from the places where they could have done most damage. Consult William Still, The Underground Railroad (Philadelphia, 1872) , a collection of anecdotes by a negro agent of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, and of the Philadelphia branch of the Railroad ”