USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -In 1850, Southerners succeeded in getting a new federal law passed to return fugitive slaves who had escaped to the North. The U.S. government enforced this law, but some Northern states passed laws to resist it.

Detailed explanation-2: -Passed on September 18, 1850 by Congress, The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was part of the Compromise of 1850. The act required that slaves be returned to their owners, even if they were in a free state. The act also made the federal government responsible for finding, returning, and trying escaped slaves.

Detailed explanation-3: -In response, black Americans and their white allies used force to protect fugitive slaves, sometimes attacking and even killing their pursuers. Conflicts sparked by the Fugitive Slave Law also infuriated southern slaveholders, who believed that the federal government was failing to keep northern abolitionists in check.

Detailed explanation-4: -Many abolitionists openly defied the law. Reverend Luther Lee, pastor of the Wesleyan Methodist Church of Syracuse, New York, wrote in 1855: I never would obey it. I had assisted thirty slaves to escape to Canada during the last month.