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The Fugitive Slave Act was federal law as well. It affected all the states. Before that law was passed by a Southern controlled federal government, an escaped slave could be harbored and helped by anyone in a free state and there was nothing the slave state could do about it. They used to send bounty hunters north to track down escaped slaves, but if free black men or white men who sided with freedom stood up to the bounty hunters, they had to leave empty handed. Black people lived in segregated communities in the North. They formed vigilance committees which were like militias that required all able bodied men to come with guns if the alarm was sounded. Many slave catchers found themselves surrounded by armed black men when they tried to recapture former slaves from Northern black towns. The Fugitive Slave Act made helping those former slaves a federal felony.