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The Compromise of 1850, or Fugitive Slave Act, compelled Northern States and their residents to facilitate and aid armed parties in the pursuit, capture, and potential re-enslavement of those alleged to be escaped slaves. Equated with "impressment" into the cause of slavery's preservation, said policy was expressly intended by its Southern framers to foment unrest and outrage in Northern States (Varon 236-237). -
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In Southern States, a parallel increase in semi-militance and non-compliance would take place among enslaved Black populations. A key contributing factor to the increasing defiance among the enslaved (and Southern anxieties concerning such) was the prevalent practice among slave owners of "loaning out" for pay their enslaved workers to urban enterprises.(Varon 238-242). -
The enforcement of The Fugitive Slave Law prompted a shift in consensus among Black abolitionists in Northern States. Figures such as Frederick Douglass resolved that the institution of slavery must be met with force. Amidst the Fugitive Slave Law, instances of concerted militant actions against the enforcement thereof would increase dramatically among the black population of the North. (Varon 238-242). -
In 1852, Jordan Hatcher, an enslaved man whose owner had so loaned him to into the employ of a Tobacco factory, would inadvertently kill a white overseer who had struck him. Though sentenced to death, his sentence was commuted to "sale and transportation" by the Governor of Virginia. In response, the gubernatorial mansion would be raided by a mob, to whom such relative leniency, based in slave owners' notions of paternalism, demonstrated Johnson to be a "damned old abolitionist" (Varon 239-240). -
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The question of slavery's legality in the aspirant state of Kansas would depend upon the 1855 election of a legislature. Preceding the vote, Senator Atchison of Missouri rode into the state with roughly 5,000 armed, pro-slavery "Border Ruffians," whose votes, many of which were fraudulent, saw the election of a majority pro-slavery legislature. This would provoke the formation of an Abolitionist legislature by the large contingent of (likewise well armed) "Free-Soil" Kansans (McPherson 145-148). -
On October 16th of 1859, John Brown, a militant Abolitionist and "Free-Soil" Kansan, set out with a band of co-conspirators to capture the Federal Armory of Harpers Ferry, Virginia. With the arms seized in the raid, he planned to furnish throughout the American South a grandiose slave revolt. By the third day of said plan, it had failed, never having left Harpers Ferry (Varon 329). -
The Raid on Harpers Ferry would cement in many White Southerners the belief that they were now, at last, "in a palpable state of war" (Varon 330). Conversely, while awaiting execution, John Brown would successfully engender his image within the Abolitionist movement as a martyr (Varon 329).