Personal liberty laws

The personal liberty laws were laws passed by several U.S. states in the North to counter the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850. Different laws did this in different ways, including allowing jury trials for escaped slaves and forbidding state authorities from cooperating in their capture and return. States with personal liberty laws included Connecticut, Massachusetts, Michigan, Maine, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Vermont.

The personal liberty laws were a series of legislations that were implemented in the United States between the 1800s and the beginning of the civil war. These laws were a direct response to the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and of 1850. The Personal Liberty Laws were designed to make the legal system more fair for all people and to ensure the safety of freedmen and escaped slaves without employing the controversial tactic of nullification. The reasoning behind this decision was simply to avoid more feuding between the northern and southern states. Only two states, New Jersey and California, gave direct official sanction or assistance to the forced return of fugitive slaves, but Indiana, Illinois and Oregon, did so indirectly, by prohibiting the entrance within their borders of negroes either slave or free. However, the United States would still endure a tense and strained relationship between the northern and southern states in the years leading up to the civil war.

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