armed resistance

In US history, period of militant opposition to slavery in the decade prior to the Civil War (1861–65). The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which tightened regulations for the arrest, trial, and surrender of fugitive slaves, even in nonslave states, provoked an increasing wave of armed resistance to slavery. Violent clashes over fugitive slaves increased and attempts to protect escaped slaves through use of arms became more common. The period culminated in John Brown's unsuccessful raid on the US arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, in 1859.

In Boston in 1854, armed resistance was considered such a threat that 2,000 soldiers were required to escort Anthony Burns, an escaped slave, to a ship that returned him to the South. The Dred Scott Decision of 1857, which ruled that African Americans were not US citizens and that slaves did not become free by entering a free state, further heightened tensions as the Civil War neared.