Stephen Mihm: ICE enforcement is echoing the Fugitive Slave Act

The scenes playing out in Minneapolis in recent weeks offer an object lesson in the dangers of federal overreach. After the killings of two American citizens — to say nothing of the brutal treatment of immigrants, both legal and otherwise — the outrage is palpable and growing.

This is yet another moment when a little history might have helped Donald Trump. The president is apparently blissfully unaware that many attempts to deploy the federal government to impose unpopular policies on an unwilling populace don’t just fail — they end up destroying those foolish enough to wield that power in the first place.

Case in point: the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, a deeply unpopular law that effectively radicalized large swaths of the American electorate. It led to widespread civil disobedience, the destruction of a major political party and, thankfully, accelerated the end of slavery itself. Its lessons are ones Republicans should ponder — and fast.

The Fugitive Slave Act was part of a larger set of bills known collectively as the Compromise of 1850, which sought to balance, ever so delicately, the political interests of the North and the South on the question of slavery. This was in the wake of the admission of territory acquired during the Mexican-American War, and the measure was a concession to pro-slavery forces. It gave Southerners a reliable means to recapture enslaved people who had run away. An enslaver need only provide a basic affidavit to a federal marshal to have a suspected fugitive arrested, at which point the detainee would be brought before federal judges, or, just as often, federal appointees known as “commissioners,” who would hear the case.

Defendants who found themselves before a commissioner could not challenge their detention and had no right to a trial by jury. Instead, the commissioner alone would rule on their case. A decision to return an alleged fugitive to slavery netted commissioners $10 (or roughly $428 in today’s dollars) versus $5 if they denied the request — a bizarre incentive structure.

At the time, abolitionists committed to the eradication of slavery remained a small minority, and most Northerners belonged to either the Whig or Democratic parties. Many of these voters believed that preservation of the Union should come before opposition to slavery. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act helped shatter this consensus and brought abolitionism far closer to the mainstream.

In the wake of the legislation, Northerners, both Black and White, formed vigilance committees designed to thwart these renditions. In several well-publicized cases, abolitionists spirited fugitives away to Canada and otherwise undermined efforts to implement the law, infuriating Southerners, who yearned for an opportunity to bring their opponents to heel.

In 1854, an opportunity presented itself when Anthony Burns, an enslaved man, fled from Virginia and settled in Boston — the center of abolitionist sentiment in the US and a kind of sanctuary city for runaways. When his former owner traveled to Boston and demanded his rendition, it set in motion events that transcended the fate of one man.

The arrest and arraignment of Burns initially proceeded as the law intended. When locals got wind of what happened, though, they mobilized, turning out thousands to protest the arrest. Crowds formed and speakers, such as the former mayor of Roxbury, channeled the spirit of the American Revolution when he decried the “boast of the slaveholder … that he will catch his slaves under the shadow of Bunker Hill.”

Matters quickly escalated. A mob attempted, unsuccessfully, to rescue Burns, killing a federal marshal. In response, President Franklin Pierce, a northern Democrat, threw his lot with enslavers, dispatching over a thousand federal troops to occupy Boston and instructing his subordinates to “incur any expense” necessary to return Burns to captivity.

After the presiding commissioner issued a ruling remanding Burns back to Virginia, the fugitive was escorted out of the courthouse by federal troops and a motley collection of hired thugs that one observer characterized as “the worst blacklegs and pimps of the city.”

The rest of the city, enraged, lined the streets, screaming “Kidnappers!” at the soldiers while hurling bottles and other trash. Local businesses closed for the day, and buildings were draped in black fabric, as if observing a funeral. Mary Seaver, the daughter of a former mayor of Boston, wrote her father, reporting that “almost all are unanimous in feelings of indignation, and mortification, and humiliation.”

Moderates who had previously counseled compliance with the Fugitive Slave Act now joined the resistance. Amos Lawrence, a wealthy cotton merchant, memorably described the city’s collective conversion: “We went to bed one night old fashioned, conservative, compromise Union Whigs, and [woke] up stark mad Abolitionists.”

Others across the country watching this spectacle underwent their own conversions. The idea that a dangerous “Slave Power” was hell-bent on expanding the reach of slavery throughout the nation now became an article of faith for many Northerners. The Burns case played a key role in that shift, as did the simultaneous passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which opened the door to slavery in territories previously held off limits.

The result was the destruction of the Whig Party, while the Democratic Party sustained crippling losses in the North in the mid-term elections. The antislavery factions from these established parties came together in the newly formed Republican Party, which would quickly vault to a dominant position, electing Abraham Lincoln president in 1860.

Which brings us to the present. Trump’s takeover of that same party is now complete, and he has used his control over it to implement a series of increasingly unpopular immigration policies foisted at gunpoint on a restive citizenry.

He may believe that ostentatious demonstrations of federal power will cow his opponents. But history, which has a funny way of repeating itself, suggests otherwise.

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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Stephen Mihm, a professor of history at the University of Georgia, is coauthor of “Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance.”