The National Debate over Slavery

Objective Objective: Students will identify the causes for the unraveling of the compromise of 1850.

I. The Fugitive Slave Act Northern resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act –The law had a number of flaws: Alleged fugitives were not entitled to trial by a jury or a speedy trial They could not testify on their own behalf Law enforcement officials made more money for convictions of alleged fugitives than for those who were found not guilty. <- Problem with this?

I. The Fugitive Slave Act Northern resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act –Some northerners felt that the law was immoral, especially since it was often used as a way to capture free blacks! Some organized “vigilance committees” to protect African-Americans Others worked for the passage of STATE personal liberty laws. –What were these laws?

I. The Fugitive Slave Act The Southern Reaction –Southerners approved of the Fugitive Slave Act. –However, they were enraged by the personal liberty laws. Why?

II. Uncle Tom’s Cabin Uncle Tom’s Cabin –Harriet Beecher Stowe, an abolitionist living in Maine, published Uncle Tom’s Cabin in –It was a scathing moral critique of slavery It focused specifically on the damage slavery did to black families

II. Uncle Tom’s Cabin Uncle Tom’s Cabin –It was commercial hit in the North and it was very successful in making many northerners abolitionists. Lincoln: “So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war."

II. Uncle Tom’s Cabin Uncle Tom’s Cabin –Southerners were not pleased! –They argued that it was a fictional account of slavery that greatly exaggerated the facts –They also noted that Stowe had only visited a plantation once –Some Southerners responded with anti-Uncle Tom literature.

III. The Kansas-Nebraska Act The Advance of Slavery –Most of the land that comprised the Louisiana Purchase was still unorganized territory. –Stephen Douglas, of Illinois, wanted these western lands settled. He also wanted a railroad (one subsidized by the government) to go through Chicago, not a southern city.

III. The Kansas-Nebraska Act The Compromise dissipates –Douglas proposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act to not only help settle the West, but to convince Southerners to allow the railroad to go through Chicago

III. The Kansas-Nebraska Act The Compromise dissipates –The Act called for dividing the Purchase into two territories, Kansas and Nebraska. –Both territories would eventually become states. Their slave status would be determined by popular sovereignty. –Douglas assumed that Kansas would be a slave state, and that Nebraska would a free state.

III. The Kansas-Nebraska Act The Northern Reaction –The South loved the Act, as it expanded the territory in which slavery could exist. –Northerners were outraged- much more outraged than Douglas expected. Many more northerners had become abolitionists by this time! –Though the Act became law in 1854, the North was embittered, and some northerners became determined to stop the advance of slavery by any means necessary.

IV. Review What caused the Compromise of 1850 to unravel?