you didn't have women on the circuit the way you end up seeing ellen kraft. the crafts on top of joining this lecture circuit phenomenon were adding something very new. susan: and it also provided income for them because people pay to attend these? ilyon woo: they do not normally charge ticket sales but they did have a collection basket that went around. susan: so they were living a somewhat comfortable life and then everything changed with the compromise of 1850 and specifically its provision about the new fugitive slave law. how did that change the circumstance for the crafts? ilyon woo: in every possible way. this was a devastating law it meant that the slavers were angry and determined that the north would participate actively in the return of fugitives and be good on their word. what this did was it enabled and slavers like ira taylor to either go them self send proxies. these proxies upon identifying enslaved people or people they are claiming to be enslaved people, like the crafts. they can have u.s. commissioners bypassing local state authorities and