Guided Notes- Review Questions:
1) What political parties were represented in the Election of 1848? _______________________________________
2) What were the provisions for the North and South in the Compromise of 1850?
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter 6, Section 2:
I)
Resistance Against the Fugitive Slave Act
a. The new FUGITIVE
SLAVE ACT had an opposite effect, angering many northerners instead of
appeasing the two sides.
i. Some ‘fugitive slaves’ were really free Blacks who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery.
This problem was made worse when judges RULED
IN FAVOR OF SOUTHERN OWNERS
BECAUSE THESE RULINGS WERE MORE MONETARILY BENEFICIAL.
b. Across the North, slaves rose up against the Fugitive Slave Act by fighting against the people that tried to
put them back into slavery. One example became known as the “CHRISTIANA
RIOT”.
c. Another way abolitionists and free Blacks helped fugitive slaves was through the network known as the
UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. Their goal was to take slaves from the South and move them, without
detection to the North. Some even left the country!
i. One famous ‘conductor’ was Harriet Tubman. She was a fugitive slave who had escaped in 1849,
and would make dozens of trips to the South to lead slaves to safety.
1. Her nickname was “BLACK
MOSES”.
ii. Published escape stories inspired Blacks and panicked Southerners.
d. In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe published the very controversial novel UNCLE
was AGAINST slavery and angered Southern slave owners greatly.
i. Southerners tried to combat abolitionist writings by writing their
own stories, of how happy and carefree slaves were.
TOM’S CABIN. Her book
II)
The Kansas-Nebraska Act Undoes the Missouri Compromise
a. Senator Stephen Douglas (the same individual who had pushed through each part of the COMPROMISE
OF 1850) stirred the debate over slavery again when NEBRASKA attempted to apply for statehood.
b. Douglas proposed splitting Nebraska into two territories- Nebraska and Kansas. It was then assumed
that Nebraska would enter as FREE and Kansas would enter as SLAVE.
i. This became known as the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
c. This Act went against the MISSOURI
III)
COMPROMISE which was written 30 years earlier.
A Battle Rages in “Bleeding Kansas”
a. Kansas attracted two types of people:
1) Those that were attracted because of the large expanses of land,
2) Those who hoped to control the state’s GOVERNMENT by populating the
territory.
b. Two governments are
established in Kansas—proslavery and
antislavery. Both groups chose cities
along the KANSAS
RIVER as the seat for
their government.
i. At first, the
PROSLAVERY government took control
of the state. But then, abolitionists flowed into Kansas to stifle their control.
ii. Both governments applied for STATEHOOD, which
would bring the conflict to a boiling point.
c. Border Ruffians invaded Lawrence, Kansas (an abolitionist
town) and burned down buildings.
i.
JOHN BROWN retaliated with an invasion of his own. Northern abolitionists were not
supportive of his actions.
d. The numerous battles that took place in Kansas in 1856 earned it the nickname “BLEEDING
KANSAS”.
i. These battles made it clear that popular sovereignty was not a solution to the slavery debate.
e. Violence spilled out of Kansas and into Congress when Preston Brooks attacks CHARLES
SUMNER for his
‘Crime Against Kansas’ speech with a cane. The people of their represented states used each man as
symbol for their position in the slavery debate.