The Fugitive Slave Act and Civil Disobedience

The Fugitive Slave Act was passed by Congress in 1850.  It was extremely cruel in that it severely penalized anyone who permitted or helped a slave escape.  The slaves themselves, if caught, were severely abused, were not allowed to testify on their own behalf, nor were they allowed  a trial by jury.  Pressure on Congress from the South to federally enforce this act was opposed strongly by the North. Special commissioners were appointed to work with the U.S. Courts to enforce the act.  Enforcement of the act backfired on the South because it led to abuses, which in turn led to support for the Underground Railroad and increased the number of abolitionists.  The Northern states also enacted personal liberty laws specifically in response to the Fugitive Slave Act.  The personal liberty laws built up so much resentment and angered the South so much that they were specifically listed as grievances and justification for the South's secession from the Union in 1860. The Act was enforced during part of the Civil War in the Southern states that bordered states loyal to the Union. The Fugitive Slave Act was finally repealed on June 28, 1864.
Civil Disobedience is an essay that was written in 1849 by Henry David Thoreau that advocated deliberately eschewing and disobeying the immoral laws set down by the government.  He stated that the people had a obligation to break laws if they believed that the morally wrong laws were damaging to the individual conscience. Since most Northerners believed that the Fugitive Slave Act was morally wrong, they chose to disobey the laws set down by the act. This Northern resistance was recurrent, publicly open, and violent.  These reoccurring confrontations, accredited to the Fugitive Slave Act and supported by Civil Disobedience, led to greater sectionalism in the U.S. by the act reaching and affecting every citizen in the North, even those who were indifferent to slavery, building up their resentment, and eventually forcing all Northern citizens to support in the anti-slavery movement.