One part of the Compromise of 1850 was the Fugitive Slave Law.  The law required Northerners to help capture escaped slaves and return them to slaveholders in the South.  People who broke the law could receive a six-month jail term and a $1,000 fine.  Before the Fugitive Slave Law went into effect, an enslaved person might escape to freedom along the Underground Railroad to free states.  Now, there would be no escaping to safety anywhere in the United States.  Even free African Americans might be rounded up in error and sent to slaveholders.  If captured, Afr

A month after the battle of Chancellorsville, Lee again invaded the North.  He still hoped that a decisive victory on northern soil would cause the United States to give up the struggle…For two days the battle raged.  As the sun set on the second day, Union troops still held a steep knoll called Little Round Top.  From there they cut the Rebel rank to ribbons.  That night Lee made the fateful decision to charge the center of Meade's line.  The same night a few miles away, Meade planned for an attack on his center.  He moved his strength there.  The after

Even though the Union forces outnumbered the Confederates by almost 2 to 1, Lee boldly went over to the offensive in the riskiest operation of his career. It paid off. On May 2, Stonewall Jackson led 28,000 men on a stealthy march through the woods to attack the Union right flank late in the afternoon. Owing to the negligence of the Union commanders, the surprise was complete. Jackson's assault crumpled the Union flank as the sun dipped below the horizon.

The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which was part of the Compromise of 1850, also helped to keep the issue of slavery before the people.  The writer Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed the feelings of most militant abolitionists about the Fugitive Slave Law when he wrote 'this filthy enactment was made in the nineteenth century by people who could read and write.  I will not obey it.'  Several northern states responded to the pressure of abolitionists.  These states openly defied the Fugitive Slave Law by passing 'personal liberty laws.' Such Laws forbade local officials to hel

But the Democratic convention, where expansionist sentiment was stronger, denied Van Buren the nomination he coveted. Instead, the delegates chose James K. Polk of Tennessee, whose commitment to territorial expansion was clear and unqualified. To avoid the accusation of sectional favoritism, the Democratic platform cleverly united a demand for the admission of Texas with a demand for the acquisition “of the whole of the Territory of Oregon.” The platform also made the dubious assertion that the United States had a clear title to both.

Yet the Compromise of 1850 did serve for a short time as a basis for sectional peace. Southern moderate coalitions won out over radicals, but southern nationalism remained strong. Southerners demanded strict northern adherence to the compromise, especially to the Fugitive Slave Law, as the price for suppressing threats of secession. In the North, the compromise received greater support. The Fugitive Slave Law was unpopular in areas where abolitionism was particularly strong, and there were a few sensational rescues or attempted rescues of escaped slaves.

A number of dramatic incidents grealty inflamed Northern opinion about both slavery and the South.  Early in 1851 a black man named Frederick Wilkins was working quietly as a waiter in a Boston coffeehouse.  Suddenly he was seized by a Virginia slave catcher who knew him as Shadrach, a runaway slave.  While Wilkins was being held for return to Virginia, a crowd of African Americans burst into the courthouse and led him away to safety. ...

Other northerners, white as well as black, increased their work for the underground railroad in response to the fugitive slave law. Several states passed "personal liberty laws" that prohibited the use of state officials and institutions in the recovery of fugitive slaves. But most northerners complied with the law. Of some 200 blacks arrested in the first six years of the law, only 15 were rescued, and only 3 of these by force. Failed rescues, in fact, had more emotional impact than successful ones.

In the early 1840s, the American people were no more stirred by the quarrels of Tyler and Clay over such issues as banking, tariffs, and distribution, important as they were, than students of history would be at a later date. What stirred the blood was the mounting evidence that the “empire of freedom” was hurdling the barriers of the “Great American Desert” and the Rocky Mountains, reaching out toward the Pacific coast. In 1845, an eastern editor gave a name to this bumptious spirit of expansion.

Democrats called on voters to repudiate the Republicans before Lincoln could issue the final emancipation proclamation on January 1. In New York, where Democratic gubernatorial candidate Horatio Seymour hoped the election would catapult him into national prominence, party organs announced that "a vote for Seymour is a vote to protect our white laborers against the association and competition of Southern negroes.' Midwestern orators proclaimed that "every white man in the North, who does not want to be swapped off for a free Nigger, should vote for the Democratic ticket.