Moreover, the law challenged the way Northern states viewed themselves. Although Blacks had enormous difficulties in places like New York, still, freedom, even if it was a veneer, was essential to the way states above the Mason-Dixon Line defined what had made them distinct and, yes, better than those below it.189 The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, however, now made Northern states active, complicit participants in upholding slavery, in denying freedom.190 That reality did not sit well.
