ese points convinced few
outsiders of the necessity for the existence of slavery, they did
underline the widespread belief in black inferiority and white
superiority. From this point of view, the necessity for defending the
glories of white civilization against the corruption of racial
degeneration justified more and more radical action.

Besides mounting this vigorous vocal defense of slavery, the South
stiffened its resistance to the circulation of anti-slavery propaganda.
State laws were passed banning the publication and circulation of
abolitionist materials, and mobs broke into post offices, confiscated
literature from the U.S. mail, and publicly burned it. The Compromise of
1850, at the urging of the South, included the Fugitive Slave Act which
vastly increased the powers of the slave owner to pursue runaway slaves
throughout the North. The law also required that Northern officials
cooperate in this process. Afro-Americans who had been living in Northern
communities for years and who were accepted as respected citizens were
now threatened with recapture by their previous masters. Many of these
leaders were forced to flee. Freedmen who lacked adequate identification
were also endangered by legal kidnapping and enslavement.

Throughout the North both blacks and whites, with the aid of the Federal
Government, were alienated by this new long arm of the peculiar
institution which reached deep into their communities. In fact many
felt, like Frederick Douglass, that this law made the Federal Government
an agent of slavery, and they believed that it forced local governments
to become its co-conspirators. Several Northern states passed new civil
rights laws in an attempt to protect their citizens. Frequently local
vigilance comittees tried to prevent the arrest of blacks in their midst.
On other occasions mobs tried and sometimes succeeded in freeing those
already arrested, In Boston, for example, a federal marshal was killed in
a clash with one such mob. The Fugitive Slave Act was a powerful blow at
the Afro-American communities in the North. It has been estimated that
between 1850 and 1860 some twenty thousand fled to Canada. In the face of
this reversal moderation became meaningless.

The involvement of the Federal Government in supporting slavery led to a
growing alienation within the Afro-American community. Increasingly,
militant leaders reevaluated their position on colonization. Henry
Highland Garnet and Mar