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Declaration of Rights and Man and Citizen
In 1789, the Declaration of Rights and Man and Citizen is a human civil rights document written by Abbé Sieyès and the Marquis de Lafayette, in consultation with Thomas Jefferson. This was part of the revolution that led slaves on France's most valuable sugar colony into their own country (Haiti) that was controlled and governed by the former slaves on that island. -
Admissions of States
People in the states were wondering about what the framers of the constitution were saying about what land was to be for slavery or free states. The actions of Congress (authorizing Vermont to be a free state and Kentucky to become a slave state) helped with the bitter debate, but not as much as people would've liked. Americans wondered if the framers wanted the number of free states and slave states to be perfectly balanced. -
Cotton Gin
It seemed like the free states were favored to have more land because Thomas Jefferson himself thought that slavery would only be a temporary thing and would die out. However, when the cotton gin was invented, this increased the demand for cotton and slaves, thus supporting the slave state's arguments. -
The Ohio River Valley
The Ohio River was basically like a fault line between free states and slave states. At the end of 1818, the free states gained Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, which all border the Ohio river. However, since many slaves were escaping up North and into these states, there was a lot of backlash and the black laws were then created. -
Lousiana Purchase
When the US government purchased a patch of land, famously known as the Louisiana Purchase, it doubled the size of the United States. This cause more bitter debate over whether the land should be for slaves or for free Americans. -
The Missouri Territory
The Missouri Territory was the largest section in the Lousiana Territory and also housed Saint Louis, a Mississippi River town filled with rich slave owners. This town was crucial for the trading networks in northern Mississippi Valley cities and the west. In 1817, Congress asked the people if the city should be for slave states or free states. In New York, they proposed to abolish slavery. Southern states responded harshly and shook the whole nation at their passion and aggression. -
The Compromise
After long weeks of aggressive and passionate debate, Congress decided on a compromise thanks to Henry Clay. Congress said that Main would be admitted into the US as a free state and Missouri would come into America as a slave state. The riveting news of the compromise had brought to the American people's attention just how discording the issue of slavery had become. Debates still filled the newspaper and each side's arguments left deep scars. -
Politics
Political leaders began attacking the old inequalities based on wealth and power between 1820 and 1846 when people drew on new political parties, new religious organizations, and new reform movements. Since these leaders brought up the inequality, Americans realized that every single rich and powerful person was white. Americans realized this and slavery briefly disappeared from the nation's spotlight and moved on to this "controversy". -
Compromise Crisis
After the compromise was reached about the Missouri territory, most Americans agreed that the constitution couldn't do much to aid or remove the amount of slavery that already existed, so slavery couldn't expand north of the 36°30′ line. However, southern slave owners were pushing for slavery in the west. Their slaves were not very happy with this and threatened lives and property after a raid in the Carolinas. -
Rise of White Supremacy
After the slight drop in slavery, it came back and came back strong too. Because of the change in leaders, all white men, regardless of status, would gain land, jobs, the right to vote, the right to a jury, the right to go to school, and the right to serve in the army. Thanks to this newfound power, leaders tried to push the country to expand so that their men could get more land. With more land, nearly always comes more slaves. -
The Jackson Administration
Andrew Jackson, president in 1828, promised benefits to white working men in the North, South, West, and small rural towns. He was elected a short time after the hot debates about slavery had just calmed down, so he was especially careful around the issue of slavery (almost avoiding it altogether), and instead tried to united Americans with the concept of white supremacy and his wishes to expand their nation. -
Doughfaces
In the 1830s, during the Missouri debates, Northerners that were friendly to Southerners were called "doughfaces" and democratic doughfaces were accused of serving the Southern slave states better than they supported their own communities. White Americans used this slur to hold something over Democratics while debating. -
The Whig Party and the Liberty Party
The Whig Party, which was mostly composed of rich, white, merchants, blamed Democrats for defending slavery and disregarding the rights of true American people, but it was well known that the Whig party was never anti-slavery in the first place. Because of this, several abolitionists made their own party dedicated to anti-slavery, known as the Liberty Party. The problem was that this party shunned women from any kind of participation and was still a believer in white supremacy. -
The Compromise of 1850
This was a compromise that tried its best to benefit everyone but it only made everything worse. For southerners, there was a new fugitive slave law that would arrest normal citizens instead of runaways. For the New Mexico and Utah territories, they would be able to vote on whether they wanted to be a slave state or not. The northerners got a new state; California. They also got a ban on the slave trade in Washington D.C. As expected, the Southerners were less than happy. -
Compromise Debates
There was a downside towards the Northerners, however. They were worried that the slaveholders had worked with the government and pointed out how 3/5 of the compromise stated in the Constitution gave Southerners more representatives in Congress. They also said that the Fugitive Slave Act extended slavery throughout the country and created special government hired commissioners to determine what would happen to any fugitives without testimony, trial, or jury. -
Compromise Debates (continued)
There was a clear case of corruption in this compromise and the Fugitive Slave Act. The law said that the commissioners who were on these cases were paid $10 if they determined that the person they evaluated was a slave and only $5 if they were determined to be free. Thanks to this, black Northerners decided it wasn't safe and migrated to Canada. -
"Hit him again!"
There were many anti-slavery raids in America and chaos was slowly taking the reigns of the country. One example is when the Republican Party, a rather new party, were energized and ready to make great things for their cause. Charles Sumner, a representative read a speech that in many ways, offended people. He read that Senator Andrew butler defended slavery so he could have sexual access to black women. His cousin, representative Brooks, beat him with a cane, right on the floor of the senate! -
President Douglas
After being elected in 1852, he had a bold plan to cut off a southern chunk of Nebraska and make it the Kansas Territory. Before he even made it into a bill, there was already a huge opposition. A man named Salmo P. Chase drafted a response; if the bill was going to pass, the government need to overturn the Missouri Compromise and open western lands for slavery. Kansas-Nebraska protests also emerged in the North. -
Bleeding Kansas
An essential part of the presidential election was the state of Kansas. There was suspected voter fraud because there were rumors that Missourians started crossing the border to tamper with the Kansas votes. Because of this, the government refused to count their votes and counted them as a pro-slavery state even though Kansas entered America as a free state. This sectional crisis had become a national crisis. It was dubbed "Bleeding Kansas". -
President Buchanan
In his last days in office, President Buchanan decided to hand a decision to his Chief Justice that would define his presidency; he would not allow black Americans to become citizens. Just as the Northerners feared, the government was indeed pro-slavery. This was when the government and America almost fell apart. Congressmen beat each other, Americans were fighting on the Kansas and Missouri territories, far west, and Mormons in Utah. The army was preparing to secure a lockdown. -
John Brown's Plans
After starting the fighting in Kansas, John Brown decided to shift his focus to the East. His plan was to attack Harper's Ferry (a federal weapon's arsenal in Virginia) and assembled a team from all across the West and in Canada. He wanted to use the weapons to lead a slave revolt. Brown did Approach Frederick Douglass but he refused to take part. He launched the raid on October 16th and by October 18th (my birthday :D), Robert E. Lee's forces had crushed the team . -
Aftermath
After Brown's raid, he was hanged at the gallows and many Northerners showed sympathy for his death. Republicans tried hard to distance themselves from Brown's incident because they needed everything they got for the 1860 Presidential election candidate, Abraham Lincoln. Winning by a landslide, Lincoln became President on November 6th. Boy, did he have his work cut out for him. -
Secession
Republicans realised that voters placed them in power so that they could enforce the Fugitive Slave Act and keep slavery in the nation's capital. However, South Carolina voted to secede the Union for the government's failure to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act in Northern states. In 1861, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Gerogia, Lousiana, and Texas, all seceded the Union. The plentiful slave states drafted a Constitution to protect slavery. -
Start of the Civil War
Aside from naming Jefferson Davis as their "president", angry Southerners fired shots on Fort Sumter. Abraham Lincoln then acted accordingly and demanded 75,000 volunteers from the North to crush the rebels and the American Civil War began. -
Conclusion
Slavery has long been the center of attention for the United States and has torn the country apart. As America expanded, the fault lines between free states and slave states became even more important, if that was possible. Anti-slavery movements remained peaceful in hopes that slavery would die out over time, but the South was running out of patience and gambled with war. By 1861, our entire country's future was up to the winner of the Civil War.
