Dr. Robert Mitchell and the Fugitive Slave Act

In September of eighteen forty-five, abolitionist physician Robert Mitchell sheltered five people who had escaped from slavery on his property here in western Pennsylvania. Bounty hunters tracked them down and raided the farm. Two escaped. Three were dragged back into bondage.

Mitchell was tried under the Fugitive Slave Act of seventeen ninety-three and convicted, suffering heavy financial penalties for his refusal to comply with a law he considered morally indefensible. What happened here helped fuel demands for a harsher federal statute, which arrived in eighteen fifty as part of the Compromise measures. The stronger Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty swept away nearly every legal protection for accused runaways, helping to accelerate the national crisis that ended in war.