In 1850, Virginia Senator James Murray Mason, buried in Christ Church Cemetery in Alexandria, authored one of the most infamous laws in American history: the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
As part of the Compromise of 1850, Mason’s law forced federal officials, even in free states, to assist in the capture and return of escaped enslaved people. It denied them a jury trial and punished anyone who aided in their flight. The act was designed to safeguard slavery, but it ignited fierce resistance across the North and further deepened the national divide.
Alexandria, still a major slave-trading center at the time, sat at the crossroads of this controversy. Mason, a staunch pro-slavery figure, would go on to serve the Confederacy and live out his final years at the Clarens Estate in Alexandria, refusing even to face the capital city he once served.