Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

About the Author

Senator James M. Mason of Virginia, grandson of Founding Father George Mason, framed the original bill that eventually passed into law as the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Born on November 3, 1798, in the District of Columbia on an island in the Potomac now known as Theodore Roosevelt Island, Mason pursued a career in law and became active in Virginia politics, serving as a delegate to Virginia’s constitutional convention in 1829 and in the state legislature. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1836 for one term and then to the U.S. Senate in 1847. In later life he would head the congressional committee that investigated the abolitionist John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry before siding with the Confederacy and serving as a diplomatic representative to France and Great Britain. When a U.S. vessel boarded the British mail packet Trent in 1861 and captured Mason and his fellow Confederate diplomat John Slidell, the resulting international incident threatened to bring Great Britain and the United States to war. He was released in 1862, represented the Confederacy in Great Britain until the end of the Civil War, and died on April 28, 1871, in Virginia.