A Ride for Liberty – The Fugitive Slaves in the context of "Fugitive slaves"

Fugitive slaves or runaway slaves were historical terms used in the 18th and 19th centuries to describe individuals who fled the institution of slavery in the United States. Modern historical scholarship often prefers the terms self-emancipated people or freedom seekers to acknowledge the active role these individuals took in claiming their own liberty.

The history of self-emancipation is linked to two federal laws that established the right of retrieval: the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The legal status of a person escaping slavery was initially addressed in the United States Constitution's Fugitive Slave Clause (Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3), which mandated the return of such individuals to the party claiming ownership. This legal framework, in tension with resistance efforts like the Underground Railroad and Northern "personal liberty laws," intensified the sectional conflict between slaveholding states and free states, contributing significantly to the causes of the American Civil War.