Fugitive Slave Law (Brown, 1986)

For black people it was no compromise. It was a disaster. What did it matter if the slave sales were forbidden in the District of Columbia? White families living there could still keep slaves. And Southern officeholders could bring slaves to serve them in the capital city of a supposedly free, democratic nation. But the chief threat for black people came from passing of the Fugitive Slave Law, one part of the Compromise of 1850...Finally, the law said that those who knew of escaped slaves and did not report what they knew could be fined and even jailed.