The retrieval of runaway slaves and indentured servants during the early colonial period was not governed by law but by the prevailing attitude in each of the settlements. As time passed, intercolonial rules, regulations, and official agreements were implemented to maximize the apprehension of runaways.

In 1787, the adoption of the Northwest Ordinance (the Northwest Territory, that included Ohio, ceded by Great Britain after the Revolutionary War) provided: "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said Territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted; provided, always, that any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service aforesaid."

That same year, a "fugitive clause" was inserted into the draft of the U.S. Constitution adopted by the Constitutional Convention that read: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." Since the federal government was not vested with power to enforce the issue, individual states were left to establish their own policy.