On This Day: GOP Repealed Fugitive Slave Act
Republicans repealed the Fugitive Slave Act
On this day (June 28) in 1864, the Republican-controlled 38th Congress repealed the notorious Fugitive Slave Act. The law had enabled slave catchers to operate freely in northern states and to kidnap any African-American residing there. Merely by attesting that the person was an escaped slave, a slave catcher could chain him and drag him away to a southern slave market. Moreover, the law required all free people as well as all local and state and federal government officials to assist slave catchers.
A pair of Democrats, Senator James Mason (D-VA) and Senator Andrew Butler (D-SC), had written the Fugitive Slave Act.
The bill repealing the Fugitive Slave Act was written by a Republican congressman from Ohio, Rufus Spalding. A Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, signed it into law.
“If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong” said Abraham Lincoln in 1864