It allowed the personal liberty of a man to be peremptorily decided by a United- States commissioner, acting with absolute power and without appeal.
For a claim exceeding twenty dollars in value, every citizen has the right to a trial by jury; but by this law the body, the life, the very soul of a man, possibly a free-born citizen, might be consigned to perpetual enslavement on the fallible judgment of a single official.

An apparently slight, yet especially odious feature of the law which served in large degree to render it inoperative was that the United-States commissioner, in the event of his remanding the alleged fugitive to slavery, received a fee of ten dollars, and, if he adjudged him to be free, received only five dollars.
It soon became evident that with the Whigs divided and the Democrats compactly united upon the finality of the Compromise, the latter would have the advantage in the ensuing Presidential election.
The tendency would naturally be to consolidate the slave-holding States in support of the Democratic candidates, because that party had a large, well-organized force throughout the North cherishing the same principles, co-operating for the same candidates, and controlling many, if not a majority, of the free States.

The Southern Whigs, equally earnest with the Democrats for the Compromise, were constantly injured at home by the outspoken anti-slavery principles of leading Northern Whigs.

Just at that point of time and from the cause indicated began the formation of parties divided on the geographical line between North and South.

But this result was as yet only foreshadowed, not developed.