Editing Jury nullification (section)

====Fugitive Slave Act====
Juries across the North acquitted defendants who had clearly breached the [[Fugitive Slave Act]] in the 1850s. Part of the [[Compromise of 1850]], it had been passed to mollify Southern slaveowners, who were otherwise threatening to secede from the Union. Secretary of State [[Daniel Webster]] was a key supporter of the law as expressed in his famous "Seventh of March" speech. He wanted high-profile convictions, but the jury nullifications ruined his presidential aspirations and his last-ditch efforts to find a compromise between North and South. Webster led the prosecution when defendants were accused of rescuing [[Shadrach Minkins]] in 1851 from Boston officials who intended to return Minkins to his owner. The juries convicted none of the men. Webster tried to enforce a law that was extremely unpopular in the North, and his [[Whig Party (United States)|Whig Party]] passed over him again when it chose a presidential nominee in 1852.<ref>Gary Collison, {{"'}}This Flagitious Offense': Daniel Webster and the Shadrach Rescue Cases, 1851-1852", ''New England Quarterly'' Vol. 68, No. 4 (December 1995), pp. 609–625 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/365877 in JSTOR] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160509175407/http://www.jstor.org/stable/365877 |date=May 9, 2016}}</ref>