No further change in the importation laws was made until the crisis immediately preceding the Civil War, when practically all opposition was removed and the law of 1833 was abolished in its entirety.[317] Explanations of the sudden turn of mind are not hard to find for the enactment was passed amid the turmoil and chaos brought on by an impending war and the radical slaveholders found it easy to get votes for their side in a last vain endeavor to save the institution, not so much from an economic standpoint as from a matter of principle. The last chapter in the legal history of the importation problem in Kentucky, however, had not yet been written. After three years of the armed conflict between the North and the South, Kentucky, which had remained loyal to the Union and fought against the slave power of the South, reenacted on February 2, 1864, the old law of 1798 on the prohibition of the importation of slaves.[318] The wording was somewhat different, but the essential provisions were the same. Coming at such a time, it never had any significance in the slavery problem in the State, but it is interesting as one of the last vain efforts of the institution before it was mustered out of the State by an amendment to the federal constitution, which was passed without the assent of the State legislature of Kentucky. No less serious than the question of importation was the problem of the fugitive slave. This has been treated many times and every discussion of it has involved much of what transpired in Kentucky or on its borders. It is not the purpose here to repeat any of that story because it belongs rather to the anti-slavery field, and, furthermore, has been recently very well treated by A. E. Martin in his _Anti-slavery Movement in Kentucky_. We are here concerned with the legal phase of the fugitive problem as it existed in Kentucky throughout this period, as an internal question; in the relation between the State and other States; and between the State and the federal authorities. In so far as it relates to the law within the State such a discussion naturally divides itself into two phases--those measures which affected the fugitive slave himself, and those which were directed towards conspirators who might have brought about the escape of slaves. The former group of laws were enacted, for the most part, in the early days of statehood, for a runaway slave was a natural evil in any condition of servitude. The latter group of measures were passed in the later days of the institution when the anti-slavery propagandists came in from the North, for until then there were no cases of enticement. A large majority of those who were placed on trial for conspiracy in the history of slavery in Kentucky proved to be outsiders who had come into the State after 1835. The citizens of the commonwealth who were opposed to the institution were satisfied to confine themselves to mere words advocating the emancipation of slaves.