ABSTRACT
By the 1830s, antislavery sentiment had grown, and would continue to intensify until the Thirteenth Amendment finally abolished involuntary servitude. Since runaway slaves crossed state lines, and only the federal government had the power to enforce the provision, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act in 1793. At the time of the adoption of the 1793 act, slavery was widespread not only in the Southern states but in the Northern ones as well. The growing tensions between North and South over issues such as the slave trade and the existence of slavery in the western territories nearly led to the rupture of the Union in early 1850. An aging Henry Clay, who had forged the Missouri Compromise of 1820, helped broker another agreement to keep the Union together, one that included a new Fugitive Slave Act. In the 1820s, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania passed "personal liberty laws" providing fugitive slaves with basic legal protections.
