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The Fugitive Slave Clause was a stipulation in the U.S. Constitution (Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3) that enslaved persons who escaped to another state had to be returned to their previous enslaver if discovered. An essential component of the Compromise of 1850 included a strengthening of that clause, through what was known as the Fugitive Slave Bill of 1850. The bill served as a concession to southern congressmen who wanted increased power to capture formerly enslaved persons. Congress passed the bill on September 18, 1850, and President Millard Fillmore signed it into law on the same day.

This petition illustrates how enslaved people used the rhetoric of the American Revolution to point out the colonies’ hypocrisy of demanding freedom and liberty, while themselves having slavery.

This Reconstruction-era broadside shows the ways in which African Americans were intimidated and threatened in order to maintain a racially stratified society.