U.S. History
Mr. Mintzes
The Slavery Debate – Prelude to Civil War
The issue of slavery haunted the United States from colonial days, when it was debated in
colonial legislatures as well as among the delegates to the Continental Congress who were
responsible for drafting the Declaration of Independence. Although not mentioned in the
Articles and Confederation or the Constitution, slavery was addressed in the Northwest
Ordinance, where it was banned from the new territories in the Northwest. As the young nation
grew and people began to migrate westward, the question of slavery went with them. As each
new territory was formed and each new state was admitted to the Union, the debate would rage
anew; should it come in as a slave state or a free state. At stake was the balance of power in
Congress. Which side would have more votes – pro or anti slavery? As usual, the issue was
often solved – although in this case only delayed – by compromise.
The Missouri Compromise: March 3, 1820
The institution of slavery had been a divisive issue in the United States for decades before the
territory of Missouri petitioned Congress for admission to the Union as a state in 1818. Since the
Revolution, the country had grown from 13 states to 22 and had managed to maintain a balance
of power between slave and free states. There were 11 free states and 11 slave states, a situation
that gave each faction equal representation in the Senate and the power to prevent the passage of
legislation not to its liking. The free states, with their much larger populations, controlled the
House of Representatives, 105 votes to 81.
In February 1819, New York Representative James Tallmadge proposed an amendment to ban
slavery in Missouri even though there were more than 2,000 slaves living there. The country was
again confronted with the volatile issue of the spread of slavery into new territories and states.
The cry against the South's "peculiar institution" had grown louder through the years. "How long
will the desire for wealth render us blind to the sin of holding both the bodies and souls of our
fellow men in chains?" Asked Representative Livermore from New Hampshire.
The South's economy was dependent upon black slavery, and 200 years of living with the
institution had made it an integral part of Southern life and culture. The South demanded that the
North recognize its right to have slaves as secured in the Constitution.
Through the efforts of Henry Clay, "the great pacificator," a compromise was finally reached on
March 3, 1820, after Maine petitioned Congress for statehood. Both states were admitted, a free
Maine and a slave Missouri, and the balance of power in Congress was maintained as before,
postponing the inevitable showdown for another generation. In an attempt to address the issue of
the further spread of slavery, however, the Missouri Compromise stipulated that all the Louisiana
Purchase territory north of the southern boundary of Missouri, except Missouri, would be free,
and the territory below that line would be slave.
Wilmot Proviso, 1846
The Wilmot Proviso was an amendment to a bill put before the U.S. House of Representatives
during the Mexican War; it provided an appropriation of $2 million to enable President Polk to
negotiate a territorial settlement with Mexico. David Wilmot introduced an amendment to the
bill stipulating that none of the territory acquired in the Mexican War should be open to slavery.
The amended bill was passed in the House, but the Senate adjourned without voting on it. In the
next session of Congress (1847), a new bill providing for a $3-million appropriation was
introduced, and Wilmot again proposed an antislavery amendment to it. The amended bill passed
the House, but the Senate drew up its own bill, which excluded the proviso. The Wilmot Proviso
created great bitterness between North and South and helped crystallize the conflict over the
extension of slavery. In the election of 1848 the terms of the Wilmot Proviso, a definite
challenge to proslavery groups, were ignored by the Whig and Democratic parties but were
adopted by the Free-Soil party. Later the Republican Party also favored excluding slavery from
new territories.
The Compromise of 1850
The antislavery forces had been pleased with the Wilmot Proviso – the exclusion of slavery from
all the lands acquired from Mexico. This, naturally, met with violent Southern opposition. When
California sought (1849) admittance to the Union as a free state, a grave crisis threatened since
the pro-slavery states feared that the admission of another “free” state would tip the balance of
power against them in Congress. In addition, the questions of the slave trade and the fugitive
slave laws had long been a problem. There was some fear that, in the event of strong antislavery
legislation, the Southern states might withdraw (secede) from the Union altogether.
Some people did not think disintegration of the Union was a serious risk, but it was alarming to
many, among them Henry Clay, who emerged from retirement to enter the Senate again.
President Zachary Taylor was among those who felt that the Union was not threatened; he
favored admission of California as a free state as well as New Mexico. These sentiments were
voiced in Congress by William H. Seward. John C. Calhoun and other Southerners, particularly
Jefferson Davis, maintained that the South should be given guarantees of equal position in the
territories, of the execution of fugitive slave laws, and of protection against the abolitionists.
Clay proposed that a series of measures be passed as an omnibus compromise bill. Support for
this plan was largely organized by Stephen A. Douglas. The measures were the admission of
California as a free state; the organization of New Mexico and Utah territories without mention
of slavery, the status of that institution to be determined by the territories themselves when they
were ready to be admitted as states (this formula came to be known as popular sovereignty);
the prohibition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia; a more strict fugitive slave law; and
the settlement of Texas boundary claims by federal payment of $10 million on the debt
contracted by the Republic of Texas.
These proposals faced great opposition, but Daniel Webster greatly enhanced the chances for
their acceptance by his famous speech on Mar. 7, 1850. Taylor's death and the accession of
conservative Millard Fillmore to the presidency made the compromise more feasible. After long
debates, Congress passed the measures in Sept., 1850. Many people, North and South, hailed the
compromise as a final solution to the question of slavery in the territories. However, the issue
reemerged in 1854 with the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and seven years after that the factions were
fighting the Civil War.
Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. It allowed people
in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow
slavery within their borders, the concept of “popular sovereignty”. The Act served to repeal
the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30´.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act infuriated many in the North who considered the Missouri
Compromise to be a long-standing binding agreement. In the pro-slavery South it was strongly
supported.
After the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed, pro-slavery and anti-slavery supporters rushed in to
settle Kansas to affect the outcome of the first election held there after the law went into effect.
Pro-slavery settlers carried the election but were charged with fraud by anti-slavery settlers, and
the results were not accepted by them. The anti-slavery settlers held another election, however
pro-slavery settlers refused to vote. This resulted in the establishment of two opposing
legislatures within the Kansas territory.
Violence soon erupted, with the anti-slavery forces led by John Brown, a violent abolitionist.
The territory earned the nickname "bleeding Kansas" as the death toll rose.
President Franklin Pierce, in support of the pro-slavery settlers, sent in Federal troops to stop the
violence and disperse the anti-slavery legislature. Another election was called. Once again proslavery supporters won and once again they were charged with election fraud. As a result,
Congress did not recognize the constitution adopted by the pro-slavery settlers and Kansas was
not allowed to become a state.
Eventually, anti-slavery settlers outnumbered pro-slavery settlers and a new constitution was
drawn up. On January 29, 1861, just before the start of the Civil War, Kansas was admitted to the
Union as a free state.
Dred Scott Decision
Dred Scott was the name of a Negro slave. He was taken by his master, an officer in the U.S.
Army, from the slave state of Missouri to the free state of Illinois and then to the free territory of
Wisconsin. He lived on free soil for a long period of time.
When the Army ordered his master to go back to Missouri, he took Scott with him back to that
slave state, where his master died. In 1846, Scott was helped by Abolitionist (anti-slavery)
lawyers to sue for his freedom in court, claiming he should be free since he had lived on free soil
for a long time. The case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court. The Chief Justice
of the Supreme Court, Roger B. Taney, was a former slave owner from Maryland.
In March 1857 the Supreme Court reached its decision. The opinion of the Court was
written by Chief Justice Taney. He declared that no slave or descendant of a slave could be
a U.S. citizen, or ever had been a U.S. citizen. As a non-citizen, the court stated, Scott had
no rights and could not sue in a Federal Court and must remain a slave. Basically, he
declared that Scott, and all other similarly situated slaves were property – nothing more.
At that time there were nearly 4 million slaves in America. The court's ruling affected the status
of every enslaved and free Negro in the United States. The ruling served to turn back the clock
concerning the rights of Negroes, ignoring the fact that black men in five of the original States
had been full voting citizens dating back to the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
The Supreme Court then went even further, ruling that Congress could not stop slavery
from spreading into the newly emerging territories, thereby declaring the Missouri
Compromise of 1820 to be unconstitutional. The Missouri Compromise had prohibited
slavery north of the parallel 36°30´ in the Louisiana Purchase. The Court declared that the
Missouri Compromise violated the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution which prohibits
Congress from depriving persons of their property without due process of law.
Anti-slavery leaders in the North cited the controversial Supreme Court decision as evidence that
Southerners wanted to extend slavery throughout the nation and ultimately rule the nation itself.
Southerners approved the Dred Scott decision believing Congress had no right to prohibit slavery
in the territories. Abraham Lincoln reacted with disgust to the ruling and was spurred into
political action, publicly speaking out against it.
Overall, the Dred Scott decision had the effect of widening the political and social gap between
North and South and took the nation closer to the brink of Civil War.
UNCLE TOM’S CABIN
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author
Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward
African Americans and slavery in the United States, so much so in the latter case that the novel
intensified the sectional conflict leading to the American Civil War.
In the first year after it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold in the United States
alone. The book's impact was so great that when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe at the start of the
American Civil War, Lincoln is often quoted as having declared, "So this is the little lady who
made this big war.”
Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Academy and an active abolitionist,
focused the novel on the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering Black slave around whom the
stories of other characters—both fellow slaves and slave owners—revolve. The sentimental
novel depicts the cruel reality of slavery. For the first time Americans who had only heard
stories of slavery were now able to read detailed accounts of the degradation endured by millions
of Negro slaves. Though fictionalized in Stowe’s novel, those accounts increased northern
opposition to slavery and influence of the abolitionists.
The Abolition Movement
In The Struggle for Equality, historian James M. McPherson defines an abolitionist "as one who
before the Civil War in the United States had agitated for the immediate, unconditional, and total
abolition of slavery in the United States."
Abolitionism as a principle was far more than just the wish to limit the extent of slavery. Most
Northerners recognized that slavery existed in the South and the Constitution did not allow the
federal government to intervene there. Most Northerners favored a policy of gradual and
compensated emancipation. After 1849 abolitionists rejected this and demanded it end
immediately and everywhere.
The abolitionist movement was strengthened by the activities of free African-Americans,
especially in the black church, who argued that the old Biblical justifications for slavery
contradicted the New Testament. African-American activists and their writings were rarely heard
outside the black community; however, they were tremendously influential to some sympathetic
whites, most prominently the first white activist to reach prominence, William Lloyd Garrison,
who was its most effective propagandist. Garrison's efforts to recruit eloquent spokesmen led to
the discovery of ex-slave Frederick Douglass, who eventually became a prominent activist in
his own right. Eventually, Douglass would publish his own, widely distributed abolitionist
newspaper, the North Star.
Many American abolitionists took an active role in opposing slavery by supporting the
Underground Railroad. This was made illegal by the federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.
Struggles in Kansas further inflamed the abolitionists as well as those in favor of retaining
slavery in the south. There were a few people whose approach to abolition was more violent, the
most notable being John Brown, who attempted to organize a slave revolt in 1859 by capturing
the armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia and arming thousands of slaves throughout the south. He
failed, but his attempt frightened the south and served to further divide the country between free
and slave states. John Brown, who was captured, tried for treason and hanged, made one of the
most prophetic statements about slavery and how it would end in America. On the day of his
death he wrote, "I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will
never be purged away but with blood.”