Jonathan Wells on the Fugitive Slave Law

In this interview, Professor Jonathan Daniel Wells discusses his book, Blind No More: African American Resistance, Free-Soil Politics, and the Coming of the Civil War. Wells argues that it was the tireless efforts of runaway slaves and free African Americans that shifted public attitudes and helped move the needle toward war. By looking directly at the Fugitive Slave Law, which extended the reach of Slave Power to the North, Wells finds that Black existence was central to the Civil War.