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Escaped slave Thomas Sims, one of the first victims of the Fugitive Slave Act...
Escaped slave Thomas Sims, one of the first victims of the Fugitive Slave Act...
Item # 718093
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May 03, 1851
THE GREENSBOROUGH PATRIOT, Greensboro, North Carolina, May 3, 1851
* Thomas Sims - Negro
* Fugitive slave case
Page 3 has a brief report headed: "More Fugitive Slaves given Up" reporting that: "Three fugitives, a man, his wife and a child, were taken in Columbia, Penn...delivered...to their owners who live in Maryland. There was some excitement among the blacks, but no resistance. The brig Acorn, with the fugitive Sims, has arrived at Savannah."
These events were the result of the new Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
Thomas Sims is a person of some note, several websites having much on him. He was among the first to fall victim to the Fugitive Slave Act, and became a cause celebre throughout the North, and abolitionists used the case to rally others to their cause.
Abolitionist J.W.C. Pennington, an escaped slave himself, wrote of the case: “Thomas Sims has been given over to his claimant and has been taken back into slavery. These cases are enough to break one’s heart. It is difficult to see how the enormous evil and crime of slavery can be carried to a greater extent. The whole land is full of blood.”
Four pages, nice condition.
AI notes: The Thomas Sims case of 1851 became a flashpoint in the national debate over slavery and the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Sims, an African American man who had escaped from slavery in Georgia, was apprehended in Boston, Massachusetts, where he had sought freedom. His arrest drew intense public attention, as abolitionists protested vigorously, held rallies, and attempted legal maneuvers to prevent his return. Despite these efforts, federal authorities, acting under the Fugitive Slave Act, conducted a highly publicized operation to return Sims to his enslaver, forcing him onto a ship bound for the South. The case exposed the deep moral and political conflicts between Northern anti-slavery sentiment and federal law protecting slaveholders’ property, galvanizing abolitionist resistance and fueling the sectional tensions that would eventually lead to the Civil War.
Category: Pre-Civil War
No Longer Available
