Besides mounting this vigorous vocal defense of slavery, the South
stiffened its resistance to the circulation of anti-slavery propaganda.
State laws were passed banning the publication and
circulation of abolitionist materials, and mobs broke into post
offices, confiscated literature from the U.S. mail, and publicly
burned it. The Compromise of 1850, at the urging of the South,
included the Fugitive Slave Act which vastly increased the powers of the
slave owner to pursue runaway slaves throughout the North. The law also
required that Northern officials cooperate in this
process. Afro-Americans who had been living in Northern
communities for years and who were accepted as respected citizens were
now threatened with recapture by their previous masters.
Many of these leaders were forced to flee. Freedmen who lacked
adequate identification were also endangered by legal kidnapping
and enslavement.
Throughout the North both blacks and whites, with the aid of the
Federal Government, were alienated by this new long arm of the
peculiar institution which reached deep into their communities.
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