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The Fugitive Slave Law, Antislavery And The Emergence Of The Republican Party In Indiana, Christopher David Walker

Open Access Dissertations

The most contentious portion of the Compromise of 1850 between the Northern free states and the Southern slave states was the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. For decades slaveholders had complained of the difficulties encountered in reclaiming their fugitive slaves and demanded stronger legislation to deal with the problem. Northerners, however, did not believe that national legislation on the subject of fugitive slaves as embodied in the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 provided adequate protection to free blacks and many states passed anti-kidnapping laws which often placed obstacles to rendition. Slaveholders discovered that the costs involved in reclaiming an absconding …