The Fugitive Slave Act

The extent of how oppressive American slavery was tends to be trivialized by a certain kind of conservative, and a certain kind of liberal tends to confuse the American style of slavery for the Biblical kind that is called slavery but drastically different, with both conservatives and liberals motivated by the stupidity of believing that subjective conscience verifies their moral preferences.  As always, I fully acknowledge that historical events cannot be known to have happened from sensory evidences that could be illusions or writings that could be deceptive or fabricated; there is no way whatsoever to know short of omniscience or freedom from some human limitations if the universe has even existed for more than a moment or two, which is a prerequisite to knowing if other civilizations, wars, elections, and so on truly happened.  Here, I am not expressing belief that any historical event like the passing of a legislative act can be proven to have happened, but I am about to describe the nature of the Fugitive Slave Act.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850--a mere 11 years before the outbreak of the American Civil War--legally demanded that anyone who encountered a runaway slave in the South or the North return that slave to its "owner."  The North's association with abolitionism did necessarily not prevent it from partaking in specific pro-slavery measures that extended across both the North and the South.  Still, the Fugitive Slave Act would not exactly have quelled tensions over slavery and was a factor that led to the eventual Civil War that to a great extent did revolve around slavery, even if only at times because the extreme controversy of slavery was impairing Lincoln's first priority of preserving the Union, as he articulated in his 1862 letter to Horace Greeley.  Slavery was an integral part of American history as put forth by various primary sources (not that anyone can know if events happened from writings or who really wrote the original documents), and today, some people in the grips of emotionalism assume that the slavery plainly allowed for in the Bible is of the same type.

One of many key differences is that the Fugitive Slave Act legally permits the opposite of what Deuteronomy 23:15-16 demands.  To return a runaway slave to his or her pagan or local master/mistress--the text does not specify which region or owner the slave is fleeing from, but this protects abused escapees either way--is itself a sin singled out specifically in this passage.  In contrast, American law, the law of the country idiotically mistaken for a Christian country by plenty of Christians and non-Christians alike (it is rather common for non-rationalist Christians and non-Christians who are not rationalists to end up believing many of the same assumptions and impossibilities), required that slaves be snatched and returned to outright racist, abusive, egoistic, emotionalistic "owners" who misinterpreted Biblical law to make themselves feel justified in believing in popular cultural norms.  Comparing the Fugitive Slave Act of antebellum America and the command of Deuteronomy 23:15-16 alone reveals that the two are inherently at odds.

This is only one of numerous major differences between Biblical slavery and historical American slavery.  It is not as if Biblical slavery is based on race, entails whipping people beyond 40 lashes (even then, any lashes must be for actual offenses and not to simply inspire fear, satisfy malice, or degrade someone, and they must not be combined with other corporal punishments), involves the rape or murder condemned elsewhere as capital offenses in Mosaic Law (Deuteronomy 22:25-27 and Exodus 21:12-14), or is derived from a slave trade rooted in kidnapping, with kidnapping itself amounting to a capital sin in Exodus 21:16.  Biblical slavery is about working off a debt that could otherwise be unpayable under humane conditions with automatic release every seven years, whether that debt was accrued by a sin that deserves financial penalties, by unfortunate personal circumstances, or mere recklessness.  The idea of this slavery, despite it being conveyed with the same word, is vastly distinct from the idea of American slavery.

These two different forms of servitude, one involuntary and stemming from kidnapping and racism even as it featured plenty of additional abuses, and the other never involving any of these things unless someone acted outside of its intended boundaries, are so distinct that it is not particularly difficult to realize this.  The passing of the Fugitive Slave Act would not even have happened if the worldview and intentions behind American slavery were identical to those behind Biblical slavery.  Very little is shared in common by the two concepts besides the mere presence of servitude, which does not necessitate or imply what so many fools inside and outside the church are too eager for assumptions to realize.  The latter has the name slavery and yet is almost nothing like the other historical practices that have been given the same name.