Slavery & the Civil War
While the American Civil War did not truly begin until 1861, many struggles between the North and the South had occurred before then. The question regarding the “peculiar institution” (slavery) had been ongoing since the formation of the United States after the American Revolutionary War. From the Three-Fifths Compromise to the Missouri Compromise, the North and the South were constantly making concessions in regards to slavery legislation. The South’s economy was agriculturally based and slavery played an enormous role in sustaining that economy. Without slave labor, the economic base of the American South would crumble. As the idea of “Manifest Destiny” spread and the country continued to expand further west, the tension regarding slavery only increased. Would slavery be allowed in territories? Would this new state’s status be pre-determined or would it be determined by popular sovereignty? The Missouri Compromise, and the Compromise of 1850 were pieces of legislation created to help answers those questions and many others like them. “After Jefferson’s 1803 purchase of French Louisiana doubled American territory, it became clear that the earlier political compromises over slavery would have to be renegotiated,” (Earle, 2011). In 1819 when Alabama was admitted to the Union as a slave state, the ratio between free and slave states was in perfect balance, however the Missouri territory was growing quickly and soon applied for statehood as well also as a slave state since the majority of those who had settled Missouri came from the South. Allowing this would have created an imbalance between the number of slave and free states so Henry Clay, the Whig Speaker of the House, created a compromise (Earle, 2011) that admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. The compromise also outlawed slavery north of 36° 30’ in the land of the Louisiana Purchase. “In this new formulation, the Missouri Compromise (1820) was not a choice between two evils; it was a win-win for everyone from |
black slaves to lovers of Union,” however it only acted as a temporary solution in preventing conflict between the North and the South, (Mason, 2013). Several years following the Missouri Compromise came the Compromise of 1850. “The Compromise of 1850 comprised a related series of statues enacted by Congress in an attempt to settle sectional disputes related to slavery,” (Wiecek, 2000). The Compromise of 1850 admitted California to the Union as a free state, established the Texas-New Mexico boundary, abolished slave trade in Washington D.C. (but did not abolish slavery itself), drastically amended the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 thus creating the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and created the Utah and New Mexico Territories and determined that their status as a slave or free state would be determined in the future by popular sovereignty. Both major parties at the time viewed this compromise to be the end of all slavery related problems however increased tensions over slavery and prolong the length of time preceding the Civil War. In 1854 another attempt was made at easing tensions and creating a compromise between the North and the South regarding the status of slavery in the new territories and states as the United States expanded into the West. The Kansas-Nebraska Act established the territories of Kansas and Nebraska and decided that their status would be determined by popular sovereignty. The original purpose of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was to open up thousands of new acres of farmland and to make the construction of a Midwest Transcontinental Railroad possible. Kansas was flooded with pro and anti-slavery supporters hoping to sway the vote their way. In 1856 Bleeding Kansas, “a culmination of decades of frustration,” broke out resulting in a bloody civil war (Litwack, Mabee, & Curry, 2012). |
Sources
Earle, J. (2011). The Political Origins of the Civil War. OAH Magazine of History, 25(2), 8–13. doi:10.1093/oahmag/oar006
Litwack, L., Mabee, C., & Curry, L. (2012). Border War: Fighting over Slavery before the Civil War., (Spring), 162–166.
Mason, M. (2013). The Maine and Missouri Crisis, 33(Winter).
Wiecek, W. M. (1852). COMPROMISE OF 1850, 2, 477–478.
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