"The Passing of Grandison" is set at a time when slavery had yet to be abolished in the United States. Not only was slavery legal, but federal law also imposed strict penalties for anyone caught helping slaves escape to freedom in Northern states or Canada. Referred to in the story as the Fugitive Slave Law, this law is better known today as the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
While laws pertaining to slaves existed in various areas of America since 1643, the precursor to the Fugitive Slave Act came in 1787 during the Constitutional Convention. Because Southern politicians feared slaves would seek freedom in Northern states that had already abolished slavery (Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Vermont among them), the Constitution contained a Fugitive Slave Clause that disallowed escaped slaves from achieving freedom even if they escaped to a free state.
The first Fugitive Slave Act, passed in 1793, went further. With growing abolitionist sentiment came added incentive for Southern politicians to pressure Congress into protecting their threatened sector of the economy. The first Fugitive Slave Act gave local governments the authority to return escaped slaves to their owners. This meant slave owners or their representatives were legally allowed to travel to free states and capture escapees. Anyone caught helping or haboring escapees could be fined five hundred dollars. Abolitionists responded with outrage at the idea of slave bounty hunters and created secret resistance groups and safe house networks, such as the Underground Railroad, to continue helping slaves escape the South. As a consequence of the law, Black people born in free states were sometimes kidnapped and sold into slavery in the South.
The second Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 saw Congress bow to further pressure from Southern lawmakers. The revised federal law increased penalties for people helping slaves escape to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. It also made it so all citizens were legally required to assist slave hunters to capture runaways.
Despite the strictures of the law, the 1850s saw tens of thousands of Black Americans escape slavery either on their own or with the assistance of clandestine networks. With the threat of capture present even for freeborn Black Americans, between fifteen and twenty thousand Black Americans settled in Canada, increasing the country's Black population by a third. Meanwhile, only an estimated 330 escapees were returned to Southern slaveholders by 1860.
Despite opposition from citizens and politicians, The Fugitive Slave Act wasn't repealed until June 1864, when the country was several years into the Civil War.
