What was the fugitive slave act?
The Fugitive Slave Act provided southern slaveholders with authorized weapons to capture slaves who had escaped to the North (or fugitive slaves) and helped to change many uninterested northerners to anti-slavery. It was also a piece of the collection of Laws referred to as the ” Compromise of 1850″. In this Compromise, the antislavery supporters achieved California as a free state, and the ban of slave trading in the District of Columbia, the capital of the United States. The pro-slavery party received compromise with regard to slaveholding in Texas and the passing the Fugitive Slave Act. Abolitionists detested the passing of this law, but the laws existence played a function in ending slavery a dozen years later. This law also encouraged the persistent process of the Underground Railroad, which was a series of more than 3,000 houses, and other places that helped the fugitive slaves escape to the North and Canada.
