Transcript Sectional tension

Road to the Civil War
 South
holds almost 4 million slaves
 Why maintain the “peculiar institution”?


Looked down upon slaves as inferior
Hope to rise in status by acquiring slaves
 Breakdown:
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80% of whites own no slaves (poor whites)
19% of whites own 1-5 (small farmers)
1% of whites own 50 or more (plantations)
 Dependent
on
slave owner
 “Valued property”fed, clothed,
shelter
 Split up families
regularly
 Runaways
 Sabotage
equipment
 Slow working
 Major fear of
resistance (Nat
Turner, 1831)
 Had
existed through the ages and provided
the economic basis for several civilizations
 Sanctioned by the bible
 Assured southern prosperity and cotton
production
 Better life for blacks in South than Africa
 Provided blacks with a better
treatment/more security than Northern
factory workers
 US
acquires Mexican Cession (M-A War)
 Wilmont
Proviso (what was that?) continues
to fail in the House/Senate
 WHAT
TO DO WITH THE LAND?!
 “The
compromise
will betray the
south. Northerners
will have to agree
to federal
protection of
slavery for the south
to feel comfortable
remaining in the
Union.”

John C. Calhoun
 “I
am speaking not
as a northern man,
but as an American
seeking the
preservation of the
Union.”

Daniel Webster
CA admitted as a FREE state
Mexican Cession divided up into NM and UT
and slavery issue decided by POP SOV
Texas given $10 million to complete NM
Slave trade but not slavery ends in D.C.
Strict Fugitive Slave law
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
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Personal liberty laws (North)
Rise in Underground Railroad activity
Priggs v. Pennsylvania
Significant turning point between N&S
 1852,
Uncle Tom’s
Cabin
 Abolitionist and
underground
railroad worker
 personalized the
political and
economic arguments
about slavery
 Swayed northern
sympathy
 300,000
copies sold in the first year
 Infuriated the South
 Encouraged other stories-Martin Delany
(black abolitionist) Blake
 South
responds: writes own version of life
including happy slaves and Christian masters
 Illinois
senator:
romantic notion of
nationalism
 Democrat, strong
supporter of
popular
sovereignty
 Encouraged land
to be split into 2
territories: K/N
 Self
taught Illinois
lawyer to senator
 Whig party (heroes
like Webster and
Clay)
 Against slavery but
for expansion;
commerce life
over agriculture
 Whig/Free
Soil party outraged
 Slave owners vs abolitionists
 Border ruffians: Missourians; "shoot, burn and
hang those against slavery”-fraudulent voters
 Armed violence: small scale civil war
 Major result: creation of Republican Party
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shocked by passage of Act
Oppose the extention of slavery into new
territory
Repeal the Fugitive Slave Law/Kansas-Nebraska
Act