This great manufacturing and commercial development, and the movement of the population westward, also awakened in the North a lively interest in internal improvements, and the steamboat, railroad and telegraph were soon to add their tremendous influences and advantages to this section of the country. The various pursuits and the development of the North increased and attracted population, and the balance between the North and the South, which was so nearly even in 1790, grew steadily in favor of the North, until at the opening of the Civil War the North had nineteen million free people against eight and one-quarter million in the South, the South at that time having four million slaves. CHAPTER V. THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE. "The Missouri question marked a distinct era in the political thought of the country ... suddenly and without warning the North and the South, the free States and the slave States, found themselves arrayed against each other in violent and absorbing conflict." _James G. Blaine_. Shall there be Slave States other than Louisiana west of the Mississippi River? This question coming suddenly before the people in 1818, laying bare the inherent antagonisms of the North and South, aroused the entire country to a white heat of excitement; and only after a most bitter and alarming struggle resulted in the third great Compromise on the slavery question. From the time of Whitney's invention to the Missouri Compromise, three important events happened in the history of slavery: The first Fugitive Slave Law passed in January, 1793; the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory in 1803, and the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. The call for legislation to enforce the Fugitive Slave provision in the Constitution came, strangely enough, from the North. A free negro had been kidnapped in Pennsylvania in 1791 and taken to Virginia. The Governor of Virginia refused to surrender the kidnappers, claiming there was no law on the subject. Upon the matter being brought to the attention of Congress by the Governor of Pennsylvania, a Fugitive Slave Law and also an Extradition Law for fugitives from justice were enacted. While the fugitive from justice was surrounded by the safeguards of a requisition accompanied by a certified copy of an indictment or affidavit charging the crime, these safeguards were not given to the slave, but he could be forcibly seized by the owner or his agent and taken before a magistrate. There was no trial by jury, and the only requisite for conviction was an affidavit that he had escaped. The harshness of this procedure was resisted from the very first by the northern people, but this law was on the statute books until the second and last law on the subject was passed as a part of the Compromise of 1850.