Statements in Congress by Southern members that a hundred thousand had escaped must be regarded as gross exaggerations.

In any event the loss was confined chiefly to the border States.

Besides, it has been stated with some show of reason that the danger of servile insurrection was diminished by the escape of potential leaders.
From the standpoint of the great body of anti-slavery men who expected to settle the slavery question by peaceable means, it was a calamity of the first magnitude that, just at the time when conditions were most favorable for transferring the active crusade from the general Government to the separate States, public attention should be directed to the one point at which the conflict was most acute and irrepressible.
Previous to 1850 there had been no general acrimonious debate in Congress on the rendition of fugitive slaves.

About half of those who had previously escaped from bondage had not taken the trouble to go as far as Canada, but were living at peace in the Northern States.

Few people at the North knew or cared anything about the details of a law that had been on the statute books since 1793.