Slavery in the United States was a controversial topic back in the 1800’s/early 1900’s. Slave masters had the upmost control of their workers and had policies in place to keep them on the plantation. Once I started reading through Winter’s Underground Airlines, I quickly realized that this is a modern interpretation of the 19th century. There are things that the time period itself was not advanced on yet. Some of these advances include modern vehicles, cell phones, hotels with complimentary breakfast, black policemen, etc.
One particular policy that caught my eye was the Fugitive Persons Act of 1793. I am relatively familiar with this act and Winters interpretation had me wanting to research further. According to Winters the Fugitive Persons Act was, “For those who escape from service are to be captured and returned, anywhere they are found in the United States, slave state or free.” (Winters, 20) He seems to describe the policy becoming strengthened in 1850, reinforced in 1861, then slavery was ended in 1875. The only issue with plausibility I have in the novel is in the fact of modernization.
My plausibility in the aspects of this act were reaffirmed by Baumgartner’s article about the enforcement of the policy, “According to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793, state and federal governments exercised concurrent authority over runaways. State legislatures exercised this concurrent authority by passing their own laws governing the extradition of fugitive slaves.” (Baumgartner, 481) She also goes onto mention the strengthening of the act in 1850, “”the act authorized federal magistrates, “upon satisfactory proof being made,” to grant certificates that empowered slaveholders to “pursue and reclaim” any “person held to service or labor in any State or Territory of the United States” who “shall hereafter escape into another State or Territory of the United States.”
This information goes to show how little the people of color were able to defend themselves in dire situations. Jim, the main character in Underground Airlines, is trying to find his girl Gentle in the Carolinas. This instates fear, nervousness, but nevertheless he wants her to be free. Looking back on these policies really shows how the Civil Rights movement allowed people of color to have the same rights and freedoms as white people.
Baumgartner, Alice L. “Enforcing the Fugitive Slave Acts in the South: Federalism, Irony, and the Conflict of Jurisdictions, 1787–1861.” The Journal of Southern History 88, no. 3 (2022): 475–500.
Winters, Ben H. Underground Airlines. First edition. New York: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown and Company, 2016.