3/25/2014
Written by Harriet Beecher
Stowe
Published in 1853
Following the passage of the
federal Fugitive Slave Act
She lived in Cincinnati, OH
Home was part on a trail of
the Underground Railroad
Wrote the book based on
case histories of escaped
slaves
KansasKansas-Nebraska Act Passed
Persuaded more people,
particularly northerners,
to become anti-slavery
Kansas Nebraska Act (1854)
Proposed by Stephen
Douglas Act to organize
the Nebraska Territory
Split into 2 territories, Kansas
and Nebraska
Popular sovereignty to
decide the issue of
slavery
People in the states would
vote
Used to get southern support
to pass the bill
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Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas
Proslavery and Antislavery
supporters flooded Kansas to
vote for a territorial legislature
March 1855
Many Missouri slaveholders
crossed the border to vote
illegally in the election
Only 1,500 eligible voters lived in
Kansas, but 6,000 vote
Creates a proslavery Legislature
Resulted in a series of fights
between proslavery and
antislavery forces
Extreme abolitionist John Brown led antislavery forces
in raids of proslavery settlement, killing 5 people
Sparked 3 years of civil war in Kansas that resulted in
many deaths and political turmoil
Known as Pottawatomie Massacre
Violence Spreads to Congress
• Senator Charles Sumner
(MA) gave a speech in
the Senate attacking
proslavery forces in
Kansas and their
supporters in congress
○ Insulted A.P. Butler, a
senator from S.C.
Preston Brooks a
representative and
relative of Butler,
retaliated by beating
Sumner over the head
as he sat at his desk
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The Rise A New Party
The Act caused a rift in
the Whig party over the
issue of slavery
Some Southern Whigs
joined Democratic Party
while Northern Whigs
helped form the
Republican Party
Democrats blamed for
the violence in Kansas
The rise of the Republicans
was bolstered by Bleeding
Kansas
A small school house in Ripon,
Wisconsin, where thirty anti-slavery
Whigs met and agreed to call for a
new political party which became the
Republican Party
Issues that Unite the Republican Party
Who made up the Republican Party?
Jackson, Michigan, site of a
meeting of antislavery supporters
in July 1856 “Under the Oaks”
Northern Whigs who were
leaderless following the
deaths of Henry Clay and
Daniel Webster, both in 1852
The Free-Soil Party, which
had played a spoiler role in
several presidential elections,
was bereft of effective
leadership
The Know-Nothing
movement, whose roots lay in
the fear of immigrants
Many Northern Democrats
who deserted their party over
the slavery issue.
Election of 1856
Repeal of the Act and halt
the expansion of slavery
Republican opposition to the
extension of slavery was based
more on economic concerns
than moral ones
The construction of the
transcontinental railroad
Support of a Homestead
Act
Ease the process for settlers to
Called
Republicans
extremists
own western lands
High protective tariffs and
liberal immigration law
Attractive to Northern
manufacturers
Site of the first Republican Party
Convention, Lafayette Hall,
Pittsburgh, Pa.1
Condemned KS-NE Act
& slavery expansion
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Dred Scott vs. Sandford (1857)
Dred Scott was a slave
who lived in Missouri (a
slave state)
His owner moved to free
territory and took Scott
and his wife.
They returned to
Missouri where Scott’s
owner died
He sued for his freedom
based on having lived in
free territory
Dred Scott vs. Sandford (1857)
Case heard before
Surpreme Court
Chief Justice Roger
Taney ruled against
Scott.
Harriet and Dred Scott
Roger Taney,
Chief Justice
of the U.S.
Supreme Court
(18 March 1857)
We publish to-day, at length, the decision of the Supreme
Court of the United States, delivered by Chief Justice
Taney, in the Dred Scott case.
The black Republicans of the North, and their allies in the
South, may lament again and again the passage of the
Nebraska-Kansas act, and the repeal of the Missouri
restriction; but the whole question has been settled by the
highest judicial tribunal in the country, and from this
decision there can be no appeal.
Abolitionism has been stunned, faction and treason in
both sections of the Union have been rebuked, and the
Constitution has been restored. This decision concedes to
the Southern people all they have ever asked -- the
Constitution. If true to themselves, they will never take any
thing less.
Dred Scott was not a U.S.
Citizen and thus could
not sue in U.S. Courts
Scott was bound by
Missouri Slave code
Congress had no right to
ban slavery in territories
Slavery effectively now
protected by law
(10 March 1857)
Judge Taney requests the American people to believe that the
framers of the Constitution did not know their own minds. For the
same Statesmen who drew up the Constitution, (which he says
forbids Congress to prohibit Slavery in the Territories,) adopted the
Ordinance of '87, which prohibited it in all the Territories we then
had. The Ordinance was passed in July, 1787 -- the Constitution
was framed in September of the same year.
The same States and the same men ratified both. And one of the
first acts of the first Congress under the Constitution was to
reaffirm the Ordinance, and to again prohibit Slavery! Which are
the best interpreters of the Constitution, the opinions of Mr. Chief
Justice Taney, or the ACTS of Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton,
Monroe, Adams, and Washington? They created the Constitution,
and the Constitution created Chief Justice Taney -- the clay which
now affects to despise the skill of the Potter.
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