Compromise of 1850 The Compromise of 1850 was made in 1850, to help the problem of California being turned into a free or slave state. In order to please the North, it proposed California would be admitted as a free state and the slave trade would be abolished in Washington D. C. In order to please the South it proposed that Congress would not pass laws regarding slavery for the rest of the territories won from Mexico, and Congress would pass a stronger law to help slaveholders recapture runaway slaves. Senator Henry Clay helped create this compromise.
Stephen A. Douglas succeeded in having this law passed. Some people were happy with this law, but instead of solving the problem it created even more tension between the North and South. It did not bring peace. This resulted to the Fugitive Slave Act which allowed people accused of being under this law to be held without an arrest warrant. It resulted to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Fugitive Slave Act The Fugitive Slave Act was a law passed in 1850 to help slave owners capture runaway slaves. This law gave no right for a slave to have a jury trial, instead a federal commissioner ruled each case.
The federal commissioner earned more money turning in the defendant to a slave owner then releasing the fugitive. Northerners had to help recapture runaway slaves. It gave fines to people who would not cooperate and put people in jail if they helped the slave escape. Southern slave catchers were allowed to roam the North and sometimes captured free African Americans. Southerners were very happy with this act and want their slaves back, but Northerners did not want to capture slaves, most of them wanted to abolish slavery. This act angered Northerners.
The population also decreased since most slaves went to Canada to escape this law and slavery. There were many free slavs in Canada. Uncle Tom’s Cabin In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The book showed the issues of slavery. The book was about an old slave named Tom and his life under three slave owners. The first two were nice to him, but the third was very harsh. It also described a scene where a slave woman and her baby tried to escape across the Ohio River. Her book was very popular in the North, but white Southerners felt like the book was giving false information and did not like it.
This book opened the eyes of many white people of how badly slaves are being treated because it talked about the truth on the harsh conditions slaves faced on a daily basis. The Kansas-Nebraska Act As the conflict between the North and South grew, the issue of slavery brought death to the west. In 1854, Senator Stephen A. Douglas came up with a proposal that divided the Nebraska Territory into Kansas and Nebraska. To get Southerners support he said that the decision to allow slavery in the territories should be solved by popular sovereignty which is a system where the residents vote to decide on if the bill should be passed.
People who were against and supported slavery came rushing into the territory to vote. Douglass won and the Southerners took down the Missouri Compromise since they were given a choice to vote for slavery in a place where the Missouri Compromise had banned it. The bill was passed and angered opponents of slavery. This act added more territory that slavery was open to. It also called for battle versus states that opposed slavery and the states that wanted slavery. It soon became a battleground. Bleeding Kansas The opposers and supporters of slavery rushed into the Kansas Territory to vote for the legislature.
During the time of the election in March 1855 there were more supporters of slavery than opposers in the territory, but they did not want to risk losing the election so they got five thousand people from Missouri to vote in the election illegally. The Kansas legislature was full of proslavery representatives. Anti-Slavery boycotted and protested the government. They made a government of their own. In May 1855, a proslavery mob attacked the town of Lawrence, Kansas. They destroyed offices and the house of the governor of the antislavery government.
The attack became known as the Sack of Lawrence. For revenge on what the supporters of slavery did in Lawrence, John Brown and seven other men went to the cabins of many proslavery neighbors and murdered five people. This attack is known as the Pottawatomie Massacre named after the creek the bodies were found. Civil war broke out in Kansas and lasted for three years thanks to this violence. The territory was later called “Bleeding Kansas. ” This caused a lot of bloodshed. Dred Scott Decision This was the decision made by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney in 1857 that Dred Scott was not a U. S citizen and was not allowed to sue in U. S. courts.
He also ruled that Scott was bound by Missouri’s slave code because he lived in Missouri. It did not matter that Dred Scott lived in free territory before. This was the decision made from the Dred Scott v. Sandford when the plaintiff, Dred Scott tried to sue for his freedom. He argued that he was a free man because he had lived in territories where slavery was illegal. Before this, his owner and him lived in Missouri, but his owner took him to live in other territories where slavery was illegal.
Then they came back to Missouri and when his owner died , he sued for his freedom. His case went to the Supreme Court in 1856. When Chief Justice Roger B. Taney ruled against Scott, he also said that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories. He said that it would violate slave owners’ property rights which was protected by the fifth Amendment. He said the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. Southerners were extremely happy with his decision, but Northerners were angry and looked to the Republican Party to stop the growing power of slaveholders.
These mixed emotions caused a lot of tension between the North and the South. Lincoln/Douglas Debate The Lincoln/Douglas debate was a number of debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in 1858. The Republicans charged that the Democrats wanted to legalize slavery in all the states not just in U. S. territory. They used this to attack many democrats, especially the sponsor of the KansasNebraska Act, Stephen A. Douglas. Illinois Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln to challenge Stephen A. Douglas for his U. S. Senate seat.
In his first campaign speech, he communicated how the North was afraid that the South wanted to expand slavery to the whole nation. He said, “A House divided against itself cannot stand,” which is from the Bible, “-|| believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved I do not expect the house to fall-but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all other. ” Abraham Lincoln said this in Springfield, Illinois, June 16,1858. They both had many debates throughout the year.
They talked about the expansion of slavery. Lincoln was against the expansion of slavery. He said slavery was “a moral, a social, and a political wrong” and said that African Americans had rights under the Declaration of Independance, but he never said slavery should be abolished. Douglas said that popular sovereignty was the best way to address slavery because it was the most democratic. The Supreme Court said popular sovereignty was unconstitutional because people can not ban slavery, it would take away slaveholders’ property rights.
Douglass said that “the people have the lawful means to introduce it or exclude it as they please” when Lincoln asked if he thought people in a territory were allowed to legally prohibit slavery. Douglass won reelection, but Lincoln had gained more popularity and strengthened his standing in the Republican Party. These debates are now seen as models of political debates. John Brown’s Raid On October 16, 1859, John Brown and 18 followers, 13 of which were whites and 5 blacks captured the Harpers Ferry arsenal in Virginia.
He did this to inspire slaves to fight for their freedom. They killed four people in the raid. He then sent out the word to rally and arm local slaves, but no slaves joined the fight. The U. S. Marines attacked him at Harpers Ferry. Some of the men escaped, but Brown and six others were captured. Ten men were killed. He was a preacher. He thinks that action gets people to listen. John Brown was tried for murder and treason. He was hanged, but on the day of his death, abolitionists ringed bells and fired guns in salute.
The Northerners were not happy, they thought how he was murdered was wrong. Southerners were happy that they killed someone who was against slavery. Southerners were horrified by the Northerners reaction to his death. This caused a stir between the North and South, he made the tension rise even higher. Election of 1860 The election of 1860 turned into two different races for presidency, one from the North and one from the South. Lincoln and Douglass were the candidates with support from the North while Breckinridge and Bell competed for Southern votes.
Lincoln and Breckinridge had the most extreme views on slavery while Douglas and Bell were considered to have an average view. Lincoln was against the expansion of slavery in the territories and Breckinridge insisted that the federal government should be required to protect slavery in any territory while Douglas and Bell neither wanted the federal government to pass new laws on slavery. Lincoln defeated Douglas in the North. Breckinridge got most of the Southerner’s votes. Douglas and Bell only won the states between the North and the Deep South.
Since the North had more people than the South, Lincoln won the presidency. Abraham Lincoln had 180 votes from the North as a part of the Republican Party, John C. Breckinridge had 72 votes from the South as a part of the Democratic Party, John Bell had 39 votes from the South as a part of the Constitutional Union, and Stephen A. Douglas had 12 votes from the North as a part of the Democratic Party. Even though, Lincoln said that he would do nothing to abolish slavery in the South, white Southerners did not trust him. Many were sure that he would try to ban slavery with the help of other Republicans.
White Southerners saw the Republican victory, as a threat to the Southern lifestyle. Once Abraham Lincoln won the presidency, the southern states started to withdraw from the Union. The seceded states formed the Confederate States of America. Southern States Secede Before the 1860 presidential election, Southerners warned that they would secede from the Union if Lincoln won. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union. Over the next six weeks, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas joined South Carolina in secession.
Other states in the Deep South, were where slave labor and cotton production were most common. In February 1861, that states that seceded met in Montgomery, Alabama. They formed the Confederate States of America. Jefferson Davis was named president of the Confederacy. They made a constitution called the Confederate Constitution which was modeled on the U. S. Constitution. The difference between the two was that the Confederate Constitution supported states’ rights and it also protected slavery in the Confederacy, including territories that might be added later on.
The Confederate states made plans to defend their separation from the Union, many believed that war between the states could be avoided, but they had to wait and see how the Union would respond. Bombing of Sumter Major Robert Anderson and his garrison held on to Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, but they were running out of supplies. Abraham Lincoln had to make a choice of either supplying the garrison and risking war or ordering the troops to leave the fort and giving in to the rebels. He decided to send supply ships to Fort Sumter.
The leaders of the Confederacy decided to attack the supply ships before they reached Fort Sumter to prevent the federal government of holding onto the fort. On April 12, 1861 at 4:30 a. m. , the Confederacy fired shore guns on the island fort. For 34 hours, they shot at the fort until Anderson surrendered. No one was killed, but the attack on Fort Sumter was the beginning of the Civil War. The effect of the bombing of Fort Sumter is that AMerican Civil War began and without the Civil War beginning who knows if slavery would still exist or if the U,S, would still be split in two.