Some Northerners responded to the Fugitive Slave Act with acts of civil disobedience. Do you think they should have been punished for breaking the law? Explain your response.

They should not have been punished

Explanation:

Founding Father Thomas Jefferson once said that "If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so." Any laws that allowed slavery including the Fugitive Slave Act was an unjust law and for people to have sat back and let it happen would have only served to embolden those who practiced it.

People were right to disobey that law and they should not have been punished for doing so. If they had not done so, the South would have continued the heinous practice of slavery and the North would have been complicit in it.

The very soul of the country was on the line and in disobeying such laws as the Fugitive Slave Act, those who did so were more patriotic than those who did not because they saw that their country would not go forward with the current practices in effect and acted to save the nation. You should not be punished for such.