Del Guercio, Gerardo

Dr. Gerardo Del Guercio teaches at the Royal Military College (St.-Jean-sur-Richelieu) and he resides in St. Leonard, Quebec.

Fugitive Slave Law in The Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin: American Society Transforms Its Culture

2013 0-7734-4518-8
This book shows how abolitionists used rhetoric and discourse, rather than violence, to change opinions about slavery. Books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin incite people to take action and they provoke a sense of urgency about the matter. Less than a decade before an impending civil war the United States enacted the Compromise of 1850, which among other things revived the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 in a more aggravated form. The main stipulation of the law was to impose strict monetary and legal penalties against those who aided the escape or impeded the capture of fugitive slaves. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe urged Americans to break the Fugitive Slave Law and free blacks across America. These are the most important texts from the American Antebellum Era that dealt with slavery and emancipation. This book explores the implications of the Fugitive Slave Law and the impact that these two figures had during that time period in American history. The argument is that Douglass and Stowe used language instead of violence to convince Americans to break the law, and that not all Americans agreed with the law.