What did some northern states do to oppose the fugitive slave act?

a) they passed personal liberty laws.

b) they ensured enslaved people had trials by jury.

c) they granted all escaped fugitives their freedom.

d) they elected members of the free-soil party to congress.

The correct answer is A. To oppose the Fugitive Slave Act, some Northern states passed personal liberty laws.

Explanation:

The Fugitive Slave Act was an American federal law that forced people in the North to return runaway slaves to their southerner owners. The law was passed by Congress on September 18, 1850. In the northern states it raised the fear of a conspiracy of the slave-holding southern states.  There were solidarity actions and liberation of captured fleeing slaves. The Wisconsin State Supreme Court invalidated the law in 1854 in a trial over a prisoner release for constitutional violations. However, the United States Supreme Court declared Wisconsin's ruling invalid in 1859.

The law was only relatively rarely applied in the northern states. A number of Northern states issued, as far as they could, complementary prescriptions, requiring, for example, that a jury had to decide whether or not someone was actually an escaped slave. Other states banned the detention of slaves who had escaped in local prisons to organize their repatriation. For all escaped slaves who had settled in the northern states, however, the law was a threat to their existence. Many fled further north and settled in Canada.

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