Fugitive Slaves by the Numbers: Statistics Printed in 1850 Newspaper

When the Compromise of 1850 was passed by Congress in September 1850, one of its provisions was a strengthened Fugitive Slave Act that denied legal rights to any black person accused of being a runaway slave. The slave catcher simply had to make a sworn statement that the accused was a fugitive slave—and the hapless victim had no means of defense. Anyone helping a runaway slave could be thrown in prison for six months and fined $1,000. Despite this harsh law, many whites and free blacks continued to assist fugitive slaves, and the Underground Railroad remained in operation.

Numbers alone can never tell the story of the trauma and struggle fugitive slaves endured in their quest for freedom, but statistics help fill in the picture. The following account was printed by the New Hampshire Sentinel (Keene, New Hampshire) in its December 5, 1850, issue:

Fugitive Slaves

Most people in New England have but an erroneous opinion as to the number of Fugitive Slaves now in the Free States. The following item which we extract from the “Connecticut Courant” will give the reader some idea of the interests at stake connected with the Fugitive Slave Law:

An able pamphlet published not long since at Washington, with the signature of “Randolph of Roanoke,” enters into a rather extended calculation of the number of fugitive slaves at the North, who escaped between 1810 and 1840, with the following results:

New York: 5,734
New Jersey: 7,221
Pennsylvania: 9,602
Ohio: 14,033
Indiana: 6,602
Illinois: 2,535
Michigan: 497

Total in the above 7 states: 46,224

Estimated number in the same States, who escaped between 1840 and 1850, 15,400. Making a total of 61,624 in 40 years, or at the rate of 1540 annually. Valuing each slave at $450, the annual loss has been $563,000 [correction: $693,000 –ed.]—and the total loss $27,730,800. The main element in determining these results is the difference between the actual increase of the free black population of the North from one census to another and what the increase would have been had it been confined to natural causes. The author, however, takes a variety of things into consideration, and makes as many allowances, and to show his liberality, not only makes no account of the fugitive slaves in New England and Canada, which latter he estimates at 500 annually, but strikes off 20 per cent. from his estimates, and calls the annual loss $553,400 [correction: $554,400 –ed.], and the aggregate loss $22,184,640.

The writer also estimates, at least to his own satisfaction, that the natural increase of the Southern slaves exceeds that of any other condition of men on this continent—that the Slave population of the South doubles once in 30 years—that the free negroes of the South double once in 35 years--that the free negroes of the South and West double once in 40 years from the natural increase alone—that the free negroes of the South are the most stable and least migratory of any class of population in the United States, leaving out of question their migration to other Slave States—that forty-nine fiftieths of all native negroes of the Slave States who are found in the Free States, were fugitive slaves when they left the Slave States.

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