Although the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law was not the first such act passed by Congress requiring that runaway slaves be returned to their so-called owners, this law proved particularly politically inflammatory due to the nature of the year when it was passed, and its specific provisions. Firstly, during this period of time, the American union was continuing to expand, and admit more Western states into its fold. Former territories could be admitted as either free or slave states, and every time a new territory became a state, the Congress was torn by increased division and decisiveness between advocates of the federal union and of state's rights.
             Also, this law transgressed the notion of what constituted the rights of the federal government in ways that previous laws did not. It called upon the federal government to enforce the law and did not merely allow Southern states to tolerate slavery within their borders and attempt to find slaves that had fled bondage with state authorities. "The law stated that in future any federal marshal who did not arrest an alleged runaway slave could be fined $1,000." ("Fugitive Slave Law," Spartacus, 2006) Although the South cast itself as an advocate of state's rights, this seemed less to validate individual state choice than it did the right of the South to make the federal government support its way of life, and criminalize those Northerners who disagreed with Southern policy.
             African-Americans even simply suspected of being a runaway slave could be arrested without warrant under the new law, making the status of being a freedman in a free state tenuous, and virtually criminalizing the Black race against the will of Northern states. Suspected escaped slaves could be "turned over to a claimant on nothing more than his sworn testimony of ownership. A suspected black slave could not ask for a jury trial nor testify on his or her own behalf." ("Fugitive Slave Law," Spartacus, 2006) Northerners who...