Early Slave Laws Essay

But as slavery went on, the slave owners tried to eliminate their fears of losing slaves by ever-harsher laws restricting their mobility, chiefly by curfews and passes. Also, in the slave states, patrols, often referred to as “slave patrols,” watched the roads for slaves who did not have passes permitting them to leave their master’s property. To cover greater territory and range outside of local counties, slave owners hired “Negro hunters” or “slave catchers,” who operated on their own as entrepreneurs looking to collect rewards for returning fugitives. Sometimes “slave hunters” acted as agents of slave owners trying to return fugitives who had managed to escape from the local area. Many of these slave hunters had packs of dogs trained to trace, tree, and attack black fugitives. However, many people in the North found slave catchers more and more obnoxious (Friedman, 2005). …show more content…
From the earliest days of slavery in America, slave owners had tried to get agreements among all of the colonies or states for the return of fugitive saves. In 1643, the several colonies of the New England Confederation (Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven) had made such a pact with one another. Throughout the colonial era, public sentiment seemed to support such a policy. That is why Southerners were able to force into the Constitution of the United States Article 4, Section 2, Clause 3 which reads: “No person held to service or labour in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from, such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due” (Epstein and Walker, 1998, p.