The first Fugitive Slave Law had been passed in 1793, but by the middle of the 19th century, with the U.S. expanding rapidly to the west and south, the balance between the abolitionist and pro-slavery states was in danger of fracture. As part of a settlement to allow for the incorporation of California, Texas, New Mexico, and Utah into the Union—although with differing constitutional arrangements—it was agreed that a new, and much stricter, Fugitive Slave Law would be enacted to replace the earlier act.
As part of the compromise, slavery was abolished in the District of Columbia but this positive move was countered by the more draconian elements within the revised Fugitive Slave Law. Under the revised act, the rights of the accused were much reduced: suspected fugitives were denied a trial by jury as well as the right to testify on their own behalf. The consequence of this was that there were no safeguards against false identification and the kidnapping of legally free blacks.
The new act was opposed by many of the leading abolitionists, although many were equally opposed to violence, such as William Lloyd Garrison (who had founded the journal Liberator in 1831 and was one of the leading journalists of the period). Others, however, saw in the new act as an erosion of the route to abolition through non-violence. One of the most notable black leaders and orators of the abolition movement—Frederick Douglass who had escaped from Maryland—commented in October 1850, “The only way to make the Fugitive Slave Law a dead letter is to make half a dozen or more dead kidnappers.”