Compromises:
Compromise and Civil War
• Declaration of
Independence-1776
• Constitution-1787
• Missouri Compromise-1820
• Compromise of 1850
• Kansas-Nebraska Act 1854
Constitution-1787
• 3/5 Compromise- Slaves count for
Population & Taxes
• Slave Trade
• Fugitive Slave Law
Slavery
• 1619
• 1793
• 1850
Slavery in the Constitution
• Article I, Section II.3 (3/5 Compromise)
– Fundamental difference lies between slave and nonslave states
– Over 90 percent of the slaves lived in five states (Georgia,
Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia)
– Compromise result: five slaves would be counted as three
persons.
– Supported by slave states to increase representation
– Supported by non-slave states that advocated principle of
property representation
– Left slavery question unresolved until Civil War
• In 1619 the first of
what would be
many slave ships
lands at Jamestown
• 20 African slaves
were sold
• African Slaves to
replace indentured
servants and
Natives
• By 1750 there are
200,000 slaves in
the South
1619-1750
Declaration of Independence- 1776
• North- Accepts slavery as part of Union
• South- Agrees to support Revolution
Slavery references dropped from Declaration
Slavery in the Constitution
• Article 1, Section IX (Slave Trade)
– The migration or importation of such persons as any of
the States now existing shall think proper to admit shall
not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year
1808....
• Article IV, Section II.3 (Fugitive Slave Law)
– No person held to service or labor in one State, under
the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in
consequence of any law or regulation therein, be
discharged from such service or labor, but shall be
delivered up on claim of the party to who such service
or labor may be due.
• Eli Whitney invents
the Cotton Gin
• Cotton Production
increases
dramatically
• The average slave can
now pick 50x more
cotton
• Slavery spreads to
areas previously
thought unsuitable for
cotton production
• From 1790 to 1810
the southern slave
population rose from
700,000 to 1.2
million
1790-1810
• Opposition to
slavery is growing
in the North.
• Fugitive Slave Law
“radicalizes” many
in the North
• Many Northerners
actively subvert
Fugitive Slave Law
• Harriet Tubman
established the
Underground
Railway
• Hundreds of Slaves
Escape north
Missouri Compromise of 1820
• California = Free State
• No Public Sale of
Slaves in D.C.
• Utah and New
Mexico=Open to
slavery through
Popular Sovereignty
• Strict and Harsh
Fugitive Slave Law in
the North
• The Whig Party begins
to split
• Maine = Free
• Missouri =
Slave
• Stop the future
advance of
slavery at the
36° 30’ line-
1850
Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
– West of
Mississippi and
– North of
Missouri’s
Southern
Boundary
“Tragic Prelude”
Compromise of 1850
(1937-1942)
John Steuart Curry
• Popular Sovereigntyallows the people of the
area to decide if they
want to be a slave state
• Led to “Bleeding
Kansas”- Mostly
Northern farmers but
Southern ruffians were
sent in- over 200
settlers died in clashes
• Nullifies Missouri
Compromise (1820)
• Splits the Democratic
Party
• Republican Party
created
Henry Ward Beecher and the Sharps Rifle
Henry Ward Beecher and the Sharps Rifle
"[H]e believed that Sharps rifle was a truly moral
agency, and that there was more moral power in one of
those instruments, so far as the slaveholders of Kansas
were concerned, than in a hundred Bibles. You might
just as well . . . read the Bible to Buffaloes as those
fellows who follow Atchison and Stringfellow; but they
have a supreme respect for the logic that is embodied
in Sharps rifles."
New York Tribune, February 8, 1856, p6.
Them Thar Is Fight’n Words!
• Charles Sumner of
Massachusetts on
the Missourians
who intimidated the
Free-Soilers in
Kansas:
“[H]irelings picked from the
drunken spew and vomit
of an uneasy civilization.”
Them Thar Is Fight’n Words!
• Charles Sumner on Senator
A.P. Butler of South
Carolina:
“[He had] chosen a
• A slave who was living in free
territory sued for his freedom
• Supreme Court Justice Roger Taney
said: “no way”
• Preston Brooks canes
Charles Sumner (May
22, 1856) in the
Senate chamber,
breaking both cane
and skull.
• Grateful Southerners
send Brooks
replacement canes
mistress…who…though
polluted in the sight of the
world, is chaste in his
sight--I mean the harlot,
Slavery.”
Dred Scott
Dred Scott Decision-1857
Them Thar Is Fight’n Words!
– Slaves are not citizens, can’t sue
– Slaves are property
• Irony: Taney had freed his slaves
and purchased the freedom of
others.
Election of 1860
Significance of the Dred Scott Case
• “They had for more than a century
before been regarded as beings of
an inferior order; and altogether
unfit to associate with the white
race, either in social or political
relations; and so far inferior that
they had no rights which the white
man was bound to respect…This
opinion was at that time fixed and
universal in the civilized portion of
the white race.”
• Simply living in a free territory
does not make one free.
• The Missouri Compromise of
1820 is declared unconstitutional:
– Slavery can really exist anywhere in the
territories!
– 5th Amendment protects property
• Northerners are livid!
• Southerners are ecstatic
» Chief Justice Roger B. Taney on the
status of slaves at the time of the
drafting of the Constitution.
24
Abolitionists
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William Lloyd Garrison
Sojourner Truth
John Brown
Harriet Tubman
Frederick Douglass
Harriet Beecher Stowe
William Lloyd Garrison
•
–
“I am aware that many object
to the severity of my
language, but is there not
cause for severity? I will be
as harsh as truth, and as
uncompromising as justice.
On this subject [immediate
emancipation], I do not wish
to think or speak or write with
moderation….I am in
earnest--I will not
equivocate--I will not
excuse--I will not retreat a
single inch--AND I WILL BE
HEARD.”
The Liberator, 1831
Harriet Tubman
• “I’ve been studying, and
studying upon it, and its clar
to me, it wasn’t John Brown
that died on that gallows.
When I think how he gave
up his life for our people,
and how he never flinched,
but was so brave to the end;
its clar to me it wasn’t
mortal man, it was God in
him.”
Sojourner Truth
• “Look at me! Look at my arm! I
have ploughed, and planted, and
gathered into barns, and no man
could head me. And ain’t I a
woman? I could work as much
and eat as much as a man--when I
could get it--and bear the lash as
well! And ain’t I a woman? I
have borne thirteen children, and
seen most all sold off to slavery,
and when I cried out with my
mother’s grief, none but Jesus
heard me! And ain’t I a woman?”
Frederick Douglass
• “I appear before
the immense
assembly this
evening as a
thief and a
robber….I stole
this head, these
limbs, this body
from my master,
and ran off with
them.”
John Brown
• “ ‘I am quite cheerful in view
of my approaching end, being
fully persuaded that I am
worth inconceivably more to
hang than for any other
purpose….I count it all joy. ‘I
have fought the good fight,’
and have, as I trust, ‘finished
my course.’”
Harriet Beecher Stowe
“So you’re the little woman who wrote the
book that made this great war.”
-Abraham Lincoln (1862)