Which increased sectional tensions in the 1850s?

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 required people in free states to help capture and return escaped enslaved people, intensifying opposition to slavery in the North and resistance from enslavers in the South. That widening conflict increased sectional tensions. The Mexican Cession and the California Gold Rush also raised disputes over slavery, but the Fugitive Slave Act most directly inflamed tensions between the sections.

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