In the summer of 1850, a group of Syracusans led by Rev. Jermain Loguen, Rev. Samuel May, and Charles Wheaton, formed a bi-racial Vigilance Committee in the Salt City. The purpose of which was to protect any Black residents purported to be enslaved peoples from arrest under the U.S. Constitution’s fugitive slave clause, which had been strengthened recently by the passage of a new Fugitive Slave Act, part of the Compromise of 1850.