The Contentious Formation of Personal Liberty Laws and the Underground Railroad

• In Event: Race, Ethnicity, and American Political Development

Abstract

In antebellum America, the US Constitution and federal law gave slave owners the right to reclaim runaway slaves in the free North. Northern states responded by passing personal liberty laws, severing their roles in enforcing federal fugitive slave law. This article situates race as the crucial explanatory factor for understanding where and when these Northern laws were enacted from 1780 to 1860 and highlights their contentious relationship to the informal Underground Railroad. The article unpacks how black abolitionists faced opposition from their white abolitionist counterparts across Northern states and cities, creating two distinctive sanctuary movements. White abolitionists forged relationships with sympathetic state officials and city officials to enact personal liberty laws. Meanwhile, black abolitionists were often excluded from formal politics altogether, but led in activism through the Underground Railroad. This article sheds light not only how race defined abolitionists movements and tactics in the North, it also adds important nuance and context for to conventional historical accounts that emphasize sectional conflict between the North and South as the primary cause behind the spread of Northern laws. Increased sectionalism’s broad regional sweep masks political conditions and processes occurring within and specific to abolitionist movements within states and cities. More broadly, the article situates this historical case into broader discussions about racial justice and activism.

Author

• Allan Colbern, Arizona State University