During three months these bills were hotly debated, and threats of disunion and violence were made openly. %381. Death of Taylor; Fillmore becomes President.%--In the midst of the debate, July 9, 1850, Taylor died, and Fillmore was sworn into office. Calhoun had died in March. Webster was made Secretary of State by Fillmore. In some respects these changes helped on the measures, all of which were carried through. Two of them were of great importance. [Illustration: Millard Fillmore] %382. Popular Sovereignty.%--The first provided that the two new territories, New Mexico and Utah, when fit to be admitted as states, should come in with or without slavery as their constitutions might determine; meantime, the question whether slavery could or could not exist there, if it arose, was to be settled by the Supreme Court. %383. The Fugitive-Slave Law.%--The other important measure of the compromise was the fugitive-slave law. The old fugitive-slave law enacted in 1793 had depended for its execution on state judges. This new law of 1850 1. Gave United States commissioners power to turn over a colored man or woman to anybody who claimed the negro as an escaped slave. 2. Provided that the negro could not give testimony. 3. "Commanded" all good citizens, when summoned, to aid in the capture of the slave, or, if necessary, in his delivery to his owners. 4. Prescribed fine and imprisonment for anybody who harbored a fugitive slave or prevented his recapture. [Illustration: %Results of the COMPROMISE of 1850%] No sooner was this law enacted than the slave owners began to use it, and during the autumn of 1850 a host of "slave catchers" and "man hunters," as they were called, invaded the North, and negroes who had escaped twenty or thirty years before were hunted up and dragged back to slavery by the marshals of the United States. This so excited the free negroes and the people of the North, that several times during 1851 they rose and rescued a slave from his captors. In New York a slave named Hamet, in Boston one named Shadrach, in Syracuse one named Jerry, and at Ottawa, Illinois, one named Jim, regained their liberty in this way. So strong was public feeling that Vermont in 1850 passed a "Personal Liberty Law," for the protection of negroes claimed as slaves.[1] [Footnote 1: On the Compromise of 1850 read Rhodes's _History of the United States_, Vol. I., pp. 104-189; Schurz's _Life of Clay_, Vol. II., Chap. 26. Do not fail to read the speeches of Calhoun, Clay, Webster, Seward; also Lodge's _Life of Webster_, pp. 264-332. For the rescue cases read Wilson's _Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America_, Chap. 26.]