By September, Henry Clay’s Compromise of 1850 had passed. “There is… peace,” Clay happily announced. “I believe it is permanent.”27 The compromise’s signature measure, the Fugitive Slave Act, handed enslavers octopus powers, allowing their tentacles to extend to the North. The Act criminalized abettors of fugitives, provided northerners incentives to capture them, and denied captured Blacks a jury trial, opening the door to mass kidnappings. To William Lloyd Garrison, the act was “so coldblooded, so inhuman and so atrocious, that Satan himself would blush to claim paternity to
