Slaveholding states threatened secession to force Northern compliance in returning fugitives

Evidence

A little more than a decade before the Constitution was written, John Adams had worried that the colonies were so different, especially the ones with agriculturally based economies dependent on enslaved labor, that “it would be a Miracle, if Such heterogeneous Ingredients did not at first produce violent Fermentations.” The uneasy union he had anticipated between the North and the South started to crack not long after it was forged. The slaveholding states demanded greater Northern complicity in maintaining human bondage, threatening secession unless Congress passed laws that made it the responsibility of others to return those who fled enslavement. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, in particular, meant that even Black people who were born free, or had managed to buy their freedom or escape slavery, had no legal right to that freedom and limited legal means to defend themselves. But many in the North hated these laws and often refused to comply. It was this tension that led to an unusual situation in the small town of Christiana, Pennsylvania, where for a rare moment Black people were allowed to defend themselves. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 796

Categorization

• XREF: Secession-threat framing over slavery before 1860 echoes the book’s through-line that the union’s fragility centered on slavery from the start, and connects to the Revolutionary-War-cause dispute.