Protest, Resistance, and Violence Chapter 10.2

Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad Fugitive Slave Act- part of the Compromise of 1850, alleged fugitives were not allowed a trial even though the 6th Amendment calls for a speedy and public trial. $10 fee for returning an alleged fugitive $1000 fine, and or 6 month imprisonment for helping an alleged fugitive.

Resisting the Law Northerners upset with the law organized a group to help endangered African Americans flee to Canada. 9 Northern states passed the personal liberties laws forbade imprisonment for runaway slaves and allowed for a trial with attorneys dragging trials out for 3 and 4 years increasing slave owners expenses.

Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad White abolitionists and free African Americans developed a system known as the underground railroad. The “conductors hid slaves in false cupboards, in secret tunnels, and provided food and clothing and helped them move on to the next “station” usually in disguise.

Harriet Tubman 1/2 One of the most famous conductors was Harriet Tubman. Tubman was injured as a young slave with a severe head injury blacking out several times a day after her slave owner hit her in the head with a lead weight. Once her owner died she made a break for it and got to Philadelphia and became free.

Harriet Tubman 2/2 After the Fugitive Slave Act she made 19 trips to the south saving approximately 300 slaves including her own parents, neither her or those she helped were ever caught. These travels usually took place at night using the North Star as a guide. Some remained in the north while many went as far as Canada in fear of being returned to the South.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin. More than a million copies were sold by 1853. It showed that slavery was not just a political contest but a great moral struggle helping Northern abolitionists increase the protests as the South criticized the book as an attack to Southerners.

Tension in Kansas and Nebraska 1/2 Stephen Douglas in 1844 was pushing to organize the territory west of Iowa and Missouri. In 1854 he developed a proposal to divide the area into two territories, Nebraska and Kansas. He was trying to develop a railroad between Chicago (his hometown) and San Francisco. But to do this he had to make a deal with Southerners to start in Memphis or New Orleans.

Tension in Kansas and Nebraska 2/2 Nebraska and Kansas though under Popular Sovereignty Douglas assumed one would go into the Senate as free and the other as slave even though it is north of the 36’ 30 line. Douglas understood slavery would not work in the open prairies since none of the crops could grow there, however to win over Southern support Douglas repeals the Missouri Compromise line, causing a “storm” in Congress.

Kansas Nebraska Act January 23, 1854 Douglas introduces a bill to Congress dividing the two territories: -Nebraska in the North -Kansas in the South It lifted the Missouri Compromise and allowed both territories to conduct Popular Sovereignty. 90% of Southerners voted for it and it upset the Northerners. With help from the 14th president Franklin Pierce, the Kansas-Nebraska Act becomes law in May 1854.

Violence Erupts in “Bleeding Kansas” 1/2 The race for Kansas began, northern and southern settlers poured into the Kansas Territory. Some farmers but most emigrant aid societies, groups formed specifically to supply rifles, animals, seed and farm equipment to anti-slavery migrants.

Violence Erupts in “Bleeding Kansas” 2/2 By March 1855 Kansas had enough people to hold an election for territorial legislature. “Border ruffians” led by David Atchison, from the slave state Missouri came into Kansas with revolvers cocked and voted illegally and got the slave state vote, setting up a capital in Lecompton. Furious anti-slaves organized a rival government in Topeka Kansas in fall 1855.

“The Sack of Lawrence” Anti-slavery groups set up a town known as Lawrence. Proslavery grand jury called the inhabitants traitors, on May 21, 1856 sent a posse of 800 to go to Lawrence and burned down the headquarters They destroyed two newspaper printing presses and looted many houses and stores.

“The Pottawatomie Massacre” John Brown (an abolitionist) soon got news of Lawrence, Brown believed god had called on him to fight slavery. Brown mistakenly believed that the anti-slavery mob killed five men, so Brown and his men on May 24th pulled five men out of there beds in the proslavery settlement of Pottawatomie Creek hacked off their hands and stabbed them with broadswords. This triggers dozens of incidents around Kansas totaling roughly 200 killings. Brown fled and Kansas became known as Bleeding Kansas.

Violence in the Senate May 19th Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner for two days verbally attacked pro-slavery congressman especially Andrew P Butler, an aged senator from South Carolina. May 22nd Butler’s nephew Preston S. Brooks walked into the chamber and up to Sumner telling him of his distaste for the speech and striking Sumner over and over again resulting in brain damage and three years out of the senate. Southerners commended Brooks giving him canes inscribed with “hit him again” and northerners were appalled seeing this as another attack by southerners to condemn freedom of speech, tensions were on the rise.