Nullification and Fugitive Slave Laws
Thomas Allen
No person held to service or labor 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 labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due. (Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 of the US Constitution)
When the States became members of the United States, they agreed to return fugitive slaves. As time passed and the Puritan Yankee abolitionists became highly influential in New England, New York, and the upper Midwest, the Northern States began refusing to aid in the return of runaway slaves. In other words, they began nullifying fugitive slave laws.
After the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, several Northern States effectively nullified it. (Presumably, Illinois and Indiana had no problem with the fugitive slave laws because they prohibited Blacks from entering them.)
Not unexpectedly, South Carolina objected to the nullifications. One reason that South Carolina gave for seceding was that various Northern States had nullified the fugitive slave laws. The reason that South Carolina listed slavery as a reason for its secession was that it was a prime example of the North’s hostility toward it and the North’s refusal to live by the Constitution.
Ironically, when South Carolina seceded, the Northern States no longer had a constitutional obligation to return runaway slaves to South Carolina. Thus, South Carolina’s secession effectively ended the need for the Northern States’ nullification, as far as South Carolina was concerned, because it was now a foreign country.
For South Carolina to secede to preserve slavery was absurd. Despite Northern States nullifying fugitive slave laws, slavery was better protected in the Union than outside it. Regardless of abolitionist rant, Republicans stressed that they had no intentions of abolishing slavery (see “Slavery Not the Reason” by Thomas Allen).
If South Carolina wanted to keep slavery intact, it would not accomplish that goal with secession. When it seceded, the United States ceased having any obligation to return runaway slaves to it.
Nevertheless, New England’s Puritanism, lust for plunder, and hatred of Southerners prevented them from letting South Carolina and the other Southern States leave the union in peace. The Yankee Puritans had seen the righteous, holy light, and they were determined to ram their vision of a sinless world down the throats of the Southern States despite the desiderata of the South. Puritans must free the world of sin so that Jesus can return — postmillennialism. (While the underlying principle of postmillennialism is that the Holy Spirit becomes stronger, the underlying principle of today’s popular premillennialism is that the Holy Spirit becomes weaker.) Moreover, they would make the South pay for their liberation from sin by stealing as much wealth from the South as possible. (To the abolitionist Puritans, the greatest sin of all was slavery, despite the Bible not condemning slavery, which is why they abandoned the Bible.)
Jefferson, Madison, Calhoun, and most other proponents of nullification taught using it to void unconstitutional federal acts. Although Madison approved of nullifying constitutional federal acts that a State disliked, most of the others did not teach using it to void constitutional acts of the federal government that a State disliked.
According to Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3, which is quoted above, the Constitution authorized fugitive slave laws. Moreover, it obligated States to return runaway slaves. Consequently, Northern States nullified fugitive slave laws not because they were unconstitutional, but because they disagreed with them. (Since the Northern States controlled Congress, why did they not repeal the fugitive slave laws or rewrite them to address their concerns?)
Nevertheless, if a State disagrees with a federal law that is constitutional, it has the right not to participate in its enforcement. However, it has no right to actively intervene or interfere with its enforcement, as some Northern States did when they nullified fugitive slave laws. If the law was unconstitutional, which the fugitive slave laws were not, a State has the right to interfere with its enforcement.
If the Puritan Yankee abolitionists found slavery so reprehensible that they would destroy the country and its constitution and cause the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives in the process, they could have bought the slaves and set them free much more cheaply and without destroying the country and its constitution. These abolitionists cared only about Black slaves in the abstract. They did not care for them personally as did their owners.
Reconstruction showed how little Northerners cared about Blacks. They threw the slaves into the free-labor market. Most slaves had few skills beyond farm labor, and most had little training in taking care of themselves. Their masters had provided their housing, food, clothing, tools, medical care, etc., and took care of them in old age and when they were unable to work. After emancipation, they immediately had to learn to do all these things for themselves. Many failed, and many died.
Also, the North could have provided freed slaves with farmland in the territories. Yet, it did not because the territories were reserved for Whites.
Unfortunately, too many Blacks still have not escaped the slave mentality. Through various federal and State welfare and civil rights programs, they depend on governments to take care of them, as they had depended on the master — they have enslaved themselves to governments. Worse, they have enslaved taxpayers to support them.
During the Jim Crow Era, Blacks were making great strides in learning how to care for themselves and to free themselves from a slave mentality. Discrimination and segregation in the North and the South forced them to become independent and rely on themselves. Then came the Civil Rights Era. Consequently, this progress was retarded and thwarted.
Appendix. The Tenth Amendment Center
The Tenth Amendment Center (TAC) is a strong supporter of nullification. However, it goes beyond the teachings of Jefferson and Calhoun. While they wrote that a State has the right to nullify federal acts that it finds unconstitutional, as far as I know, they never promoted the nullification of constitutional acts with which a State disagrees. (When the Northern States nullified fugitive slave laws, they nullified constitutional laws with which they disagreed.)
However, TAC goes beyond nullifying unconstitutional federal acts. It not only endorses a State nullifying unconstitutional federal acts but also endorses a State nullifying constitutional federal acts that it dislikes — except for Southern States nullifying civil rights acts of the federal government, including those that are unconstitutional, such as school desegregation and integration. (I have not found TAC expressly opposing or condemning the Southern States and communities attempting to nullify federal acts outlawing segregation and forcing integration. However, it does support Communist agents and Communist-front organizations nullifying State and local segregation laws and practices. Consequently, I infer that it opposes States and communities attempting to nullify these federal acts.) Thus, TAC supports Northern States' nullifying fugitive slave laws and opposes South Carolina's objection.
TAC seems to have a low opinion of Calhoun, despite him probably being the most brilliant and original political philosopher that the Western Hemisphere has ever produced, because he supported giving nullification real teeth. Calhoun argued that a State could prevent the enforcement of an unconstitutional federal law within its borders by vetoing it and thus making it unenforceable, as did Vermont’s nullification of the fugitive slave laws, which authorized arresting and penalizing federal officials attempting to enforce the fugitive slave laws. TAC objects to giving nullification teeth — at least in practice. Consequently, TAC rejects a State enforcing its nullification by jailing federal agents who attempt to enforce the nullified act in that State. In its opinion and Madison’s, such nullification allows one State to impose its will on the other States by preventing the enforcement of a nullified act within the nullifying State but not in the other States. Yet, TAC only weakly, if at all, objects to other States imposing their will on the nullifying State. In short, while Calhoun advocates nullification-heavy, TAC and Madison advocate nullification-light.
Copyright © 2025 by Thomas Coley Allen.
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