1. Lesson 15.2: The Crisis Deepens

2. Essential Question
What impact did the Fugitive Slave Act have on the slavery debate?

3. Focus Questions
What could happen to people accused of being fugitives under the Fugitive Slave Act?
Why did Northerners resent the Fugitive Slave Act?
Why was the Kansas-Nebraska Act so controversial?

4. Focus Questions
How did the official Kansas legislature become packed with proslavery representatives?
What was the cause of “Bleeding Kansas”?
Why did Preston Brooks attack Senator Sumner of Massachusetts and hit him 30 times with his cane?

5. Vocabulary
Harriet Beecher Stowe - Abolitionist and author who opposed the Fugitive Slave Act
Uncle Tom’s Cabin – novel which portrayed the brutality of slavery.
Fugitive Slave Act – 1850 law which helped slaveholders recapture runaway slaves.

6. Vocabulary
4. Popular Sovereignty – a system in which the residents vote to decide an issue.
5. Kansas-Nebraska Act – 1854 law that established territories and gave their residents the right to decide whether to allow slavery.
6. John Brown – Extreme abolitionist responsible for the murder of 5 proslavery people.

7. 1815
1825
1835
1840
1850
1820 Missouri Compromise drawing the line at ’
1846 Beginning of the Mexican American War
1846 Wilmot Proviso wanted to ban slavery in territory won from Mexico.
1848 Gold discovered at Sutter’s Mill in California
1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ending the War giving America the Mexican Cession
1850 Compromise of 1850 admitted California and set up new fugitive slave laws.

8. What We Already Know…
Disagreements over slavery led to increased tensions between the North and the South.

9. What We Already Know…
California’s request for statehood led to Henry Clay’s Compromise of 1850.
Mayflower Compact = self rule

10. What We Already Know…
The Compromise of 1850 contained a controversial new fugitive slave law.
Mayflower Compact = self rule

11. Fugitive Slave Act:
1. People accused of being fugitives could be held without an arrest warrant.
2. Instead of a jury trial, a federal commissioner ruled on each case.
3. The commissioner received five dollars for releasing the defendant and ten dollars for turning the defendant over to a slaveholder.

12. Fugitive Slave Act:
The law forced Northerners to help recapture runaway slaves. The law also penalized officials. If they did not arrest an alleged runaway slave, they were forced to pay a fine of $1,000 ($28,000 in today’s money.)
 Any person aiding a runaway slave by providing food or
shelter was subject to
six months imprisonment and a $1,000 fine.
By obeying the Act they were forced to support slavery.
Mayflower Compact = self rule

13. Fugitive Slave Act:
Southerners believed slaves were property and should be returned.
Northerners realized that, by supporting the Fugitive Slave Act, they were supporting slavery.
Should they obey the law and support slavery, or should they break the law and oppose slavery?

14. Fugitive Slave Act:
During this time Southern slave catchers roamed the North, sometimes capturing free African Americans instead of runaway slaves.

15. Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe, along with her brother were active abolitionists who helped runaway slaves and actively campaigned against slavery.
Outraged by the Fugitive Slave Act she wrote “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in 1852 which dramatically portrayed slavery as brutal and immoral.

16. Uncle Tom’s Cabin
The novel includes dramatic scenes, such as the dangerous escape of a slave named Eliza and her baby
across the frozen Ohio River.
The book was criticized by Southerner’s as being inaccurate .

17. Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century and helped fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s.
Legend has it that when
President Lincoln met
Stowe he said, “So this is the
little lady who started the great war.”

18. Kansas - Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, opening new lands for settlement.
The act was designed by Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. The idea was to open up many thousands of
new farms and make
possible a Midwestern
Transcontinental Railroad.

19. Kansas - Nebraska Act
Hoping to ease tension over the slavery issue, Douglas included popular sovereignty - each state would vote to decide for itself if it would be a free state or a slave state.

20. Territorial Legislation
Compromise of 1850
Missouri Compromise of 1820
Free
Slave
Kansas - Nebraska Act
Territory closed to slavery
Territory open to slavery
Not property of US

21. Kansas - Nebraska Act
The Act only created more tension because it would potentially allow slavery north of the parallel undoing the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850!
Obviously, Southerners supported the bill, but it angered opponents of slavery.
This turned Kansas into a battleground over slavery

22. Bleeding Kansas
Most Americans accepted that Nebraska was expected to become a free state. Settlers from both sides of the slavery issue flooded the
Kansas territory to
acquire lands
and vote on the
issue of slavery.

23. Bleeding Kansas
At the time of the election in March 1855, there were more proslavery settlers than antislavery settlers in the territory. But the proslavery forces did not want to risk losing the election. Five thousand Missourians came and voted in the election illegally.

24. Bleeding Kansas
As a result of the election, the official Kansas legislature was packed with proslavery representatives. Antislavery settlers boycotted the official government and formed a government of their own.

25. Bleeding Kansas
With political authority in dispute, settlers on both sides armed themselves.
In May, a group of
proslavery supporters
attacked and sacked
the headquarters of the anti-slavery anti-anti-slavery governor
in Lawrence Kansas.
This incident became known as the Sack of Lawrence.

26. Bleeding Kansas
Seeking revenge for the sack of Lawrence, an extreme abolitionist named John Brown and seven other antislavery men attacked proslavery residents and murdered five of their proslavery neighbors as they slept at a cabin near Pottawatomie Creek.

27. Bleeding Kansas
As news of John Brown’s attack (known as the Pottawatomie Massacre) spread, civil war broke out in Kansas…
… a war that lasted three years giving the territory the name, “Bleeding Kansas.”

28. Violence in Congress
In late May, 1856, Senator Charles Sumner of
Massachusetts gave a rousing anti slavery speech before the Senate.
In very insulting terms, he attacked the pro-slavery forces in Kansas, the institution of slavery in general, and pro-slavery Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina in particular

29. Violence in Congress
Nearby, in the House of Representatives, South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks got wind of Sumner’s speech.
Senator Butler was related to Congressman Brooks, who angrily decided he must defend the honor of his family and of the South.

30. Violence in Congress
Congressman Brooks went to the Senate chamber looking for Sumner. He found Sumner working at his desk and viciously beat Sumner unconscious with a cane.
Many Southerners
cheered Brooks’
defense of the
South, but most
Northerners were
shocked at such
violence in the Senate.

31. Violence in Congress
“Bleeding Kansas” and “Bleeding Sumner” became rallying cries for antislavery Northerners, as well as for a new political
party that was
beginning to
emerge.