what did the fugitive slave act say and why were the northerners so outraged?

Question

referring to pre-civil war movement. help fast!

Answer 1

The fugitive slave laws were statutes passed by the United States Congress in 1793 and 1850 to provide for the return of slaves who escaped from one state into another or into a public territory.

The measure soon met with strong opposition in the Northern states and Personal Liberty Laws were passed to hamper officials in the execution of the law; Indiana in 1824 and Connecticut in 1828 provided jury trial for fugitives who appealed from an original decision against them. In 1840, New York and Vermont extended the right of trial by jury to fugitives and provided them with attorneys. As early as the first decade of the 19th century, individual dissatisfaction with the law of 1793 had taken the form of systematic assistance rendered to Negroes escaping from the South to Canada or New England: the so-called Underground Railroad.

The decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Prigg v. Pennsylvania in 1842 (16 Peters 539)—that state authorities could not be forced to act in fugitive slave cases, but that national authorities must carry out the national law—was followed by legislation in Massachusetts (1843), Vermont (1843), Pennsylvania (1847) and Rhode Island (1848), forbidding state officials from aiding in enforcing the law and refusing the use of state jails for fugitive slaves.

Answer 2

Despite being strongly opposed to the abolitionist movement, The Fugitive slave act also did not protect freemen. Any African who was accused of being a run away could be captured and sold in to slavery even if they had lived their entire lives as a freeman in the north.

all that was needed was two white men to swear that the African in question was a run away and they were sent to the south. so some bounty hunters would simply kidnap a free man, take him/her to the court and swear that they were a run away and the person would be immediately sold in to slavery.

The act gave too much freedom to the Bounty hunters and not enough to local, state or federal laws.

Answer 3

that the former slave must be returned to his/her owner

even if the person escaped to the north

northern sentiment was for the slave and against slavery, abolitionism