 While most of these cases began on the streets of Philadelphia, all of them involved high-profile politicians, from governors to members of Congress to Supreme Court justices. These struggles in Pennsylvania brought to light the illusory nature of borders between the free and the slave states, as well as the inherent tension over freedom and slavery that eventually led to the Civil War. To the chagrin of slaveholders, by 1850, a slew of northern states followed Pennsylvania's lead and enacted their own liberty laws.