The federal government was not a major force in the lives of ordinary people until the Civil War, then again in WWI and most especially with Prohibition interfering with immigrants making homemade beverages.
There was also that awful income tax that came into effect permanently in 1913., levied only on high income folks. There was Herbert Hoover in the 1920’s telling manufacturers about product sizes and regulating broadcasting, including of religious programs. In 1933, FDR made the federal government into something that impacted ordinary people.
When the first slave was imported, eyebrows might have been raised, but there was no law forbidding importation of slaves.
Some of the slaves may have been servants indentured in Africa and defrauded into slavery, but that was a private matter between the ship captain importer and the slave.
If a slave escaped, rewards were offered in private newspapers. The rewards were privately paid and the escaped chattel brought back by private bounty hunters.
The Fugitive Slave Act allowed for government intervention, but like a dropped dollar bill the escaped slave was snatched up and hauled back to the plantation, privately.
Lincoln caused Federal power to grow far larger than the framers ever intended. He created the leviathan that is subjugating us today.
The Fugitive Slave Act allowed for government intervention, but like a dropped dollar bill the escaped slave was snatched up and hauled back to the plantation, privately.
A lot of people are unaware that the "Fugitive Slave Act" only codified in Federal law what the US Constitution already required.
Look at Article IV, section 2. It says fugitive slaves must be returned to their masters, but it says it in flowery and euphemistic language.