Hello friends and welcome to the ninth episode in our series, Secrets of the Civil War.

On a bitterly cold February afternoon, several men entered Boston's Federal Courthouse.

Their coats were buttoned up high and their hair was brushed strategically to conceal as

much of their faces as possible.

This group of anonymous men was frustrated.

They were tired of playing by their rules, tired of waiting for loopholes through which

they could take illegal action so they decided to take matters into their own hands.

They were there to perform a jailbreak.

I'm Sharon McBam and here's where it gets interesting.

Six months before the Boston Federal Courthouse was stormed by liberators on a mission,

Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

The act was updated from its predecessor, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, which gave

enslavers the right to search for the escaped enslaved in free states.

The update took things a step further and was part of Henry Clay's Compromise of 1850,

a group of bills that attempted to appease both the North and the South and defuse conflict.

So the Compromise, among other things, meant that California would enter the Union as a

free state, but the persecution of the escaped enslaved grew far more robust.

The act denied enslaved people the right to a jury trial and it increased the penalty

for interfering with any part of the apprehension process with a $1,000 fine and six months

of jail.

In other words, anyone caught aiding a fugitive would be prosecuted.

It also placed the responsibility on the federal government to enforce the act.

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