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Discussion response for this post The fugitive Slave Act and The Great Compromise of 1850 were both political policies aimed at maintaining the Union and preventing the succession of the southern slave states. The Fugitive Slave Act was enacted to provide southern slave owners the rights to retrieve slaves who escaped to free states. Slaves were often captured for bounties under the protection of federal law, the same federal law that offered individuals no legal recourse to challenge their return. "Disagreements between Northern abolitionists fighting against what they termed the moral injustice of slavery and white Southerners trying to hold on to their way of life became more frequent and harder to resolve" (Fraley, 2022). As the United States began to add territories to the Union the issue of slavery continued to build tension between free and slave states. The issue that law makers faced was deciding if new territories would be free or allow slavery. "California's application for statehood led to the Compromise of 1850, which allowed California to be free, but included the Fugitive Slave Act. The political peace bought by this compromise was short-lived, and soon it began working to further inflame sectional conflict" (Bryant, 2022). I believe that congress attempted to draft legislation to prevent southern succession, but the battle lines were being drawn on both sides of slavery. "As the slavery issue became more politicized, Americans hardened their positions on both sides, and as a consequence often modified their religious and political affiliations, further deepening sectional divisions" (Fraley, 2022). As the Acts did little to address the root issue of conflict, I believe the Civil War was inevitable.