<P> The fourth statute of the Compromise of 1850, enacted September 18, 1850, is informally known as the Fugitive Slave Law, or the Fugitive Slave Act . It bolstered the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 . The new version of the Fugitive Slave Law required federal judicial officials in all states and federal territories, including in those states and territories in which slavery was prohibited, to assist with the return of escaped slaves to their masters actively in the states and territories permitting slavery . Any federal marshal or other official who did not arrest an alleged runaway slave was liable to a fine of $1000 . Law enforcement everywhere in the US had a duty to arrest anyone suspected of being a fugitive slave on no more evidence than a claimant's sworn testimony of ownership . Suspected slaves could neither ask for a jury trial nor testify on their own behalf . In addition, any person aiding a runaway slave by providing food or shelter was to be subject to six months' imprisonment and a $1000 fine . Officers capturing a fugitive slave were entitled to a fee for their work . </P> <P> In addition to federal officials, the ordinary citizens of free states could be summoned to join a posse and be required to assist in the capture, custody, and / or transportation of the alleged escaped slave . </P> <P> The law was so rigorously pro-slavery as to prohibit the admission of the testimony of a person accused of being an escaped slave into evidence at the judicial hearing to determine the status of the accused escaped slave . Thus, if a freedman were claimed to be an escaped slave, they could not resist their return to slavery by truthfully telling their own actual history . </P> <P> The Fugitive Slave Act was essential to meet Southern demands . In terms of public opinion in the North, the critical provision was that ordinary citizens were required to aid slave catchers . Many northerners deeply resented that requirement to help slavery personally . Resentment towards the Act continued to heighten tensions between the North and South, which were inflamed further by abolitionists such as Harriet Beecher Stowe . Her book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, stressed the horrors of recapturing escaped slaves and outraged Southerners . </P>

The missouri compromise was designed to achieve what outcome