Unit 3: Fugitives for Freedom

	Fugitive slaves settled in many Canadian communities, and British authorities refused to comply with U.S. requests for their surrender. Importing slaves from abroad was a federal crime after 1808, but smuggling continued until the Civil War.
	After Nat Turner's short lived insurrection resulted in the death of more than 50 Virginia whites in 1831, the South tightened slave codes and restricted manumission. Some slaves stowed away on ships to the Bahamas, where the British had abolished slavery in 1833.
	The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 modified the Missouri Compromise, leaving the question of slavery open to territorial legislatures. In 1857 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Dread Scott case that a slave was not a citizen, nor was he freed by virtue of temporary residence in a Free State.

FLIGHT TO FREEDOM

SELF-EMANCIPATION carried fugitive slaves on their perilous journeys to the closest free territory. For some of them, the P for Pennsylvania (opposite) on a marker at the Mason-Dixon Line signified success. As Americans moved west, the question of slavery doffed every step, and comprimises in Congress postponed the day of reckoning. Under the Missouri Comprimise

of 1820, Missouri entered the Union as a slave state. Maine and lands north of 36^o30' acquired through the Louisiana Purchase as free territory. In 1850 California entered free in exchange for the southern-backed Fugitive Slave Law, which forced citizens to assist catchers, antagonizing Northerners and spurring their support of the Underground Railroad.

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