ISSUES INVOLVING AFRICAN AMERICANS DURING THE ANTEBELLUM PERIOD

POST REVOLUTIONARY WAR Despite helping America win its independence from England, the majority of African Americans remained in slavery.

POST REVOLUTIONARY WAR As new states began to be formed in America; the decision on whether they would be free states or slave states created MAJOR debate.

Northerners did not want slavery to spread into their territory. BLACK ANTEBELLUM NORTH ________________ BANNED SLAVERY Northerners did not want slavery to spread into their territory.

NEEDED slavery to continue; for its ECONOMY depended on it. BLACK ANTEBELLUM SOUTH _____________ NEEDED slavery to continue; for its ECONOMY depended on it.

BLACK ANTEBELLUM The controversial issue would NOT GO AWAY and TENSIONS FROM BOTH SIDES HEATED UP

POST REVOLUTIONARY WAR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WOULD ARGUE AND FIGHT OVER THE ISSUE OF SLAVERY OVER THE NEXT 60+ YEARS!

HOW DARE YOU TALK ABOUT MY FAMILY !!!!

FREE STATES VS SLAVE STATES

MISSOURI COMPROMISE OF 1820

MISSOURI COMPROMISE Permitted Maine to enter as a FREE state and Missouri to enter as a SLAVE state.

MISSOURI COMPROMISE The Missouri Compromise also drew a line to divide slave territory in the south from free territory in the north.

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850

Compromise of 1850 California was added as FREE state, WHILE the unorganized territories of New Mexico and Utah were given the choice of popular sovereignty.

POPULAR SOVERIGNITY Popular Sovereignty the people of the area vote to determine how the state would enter.

POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY

KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT The issue of slavery was to be decided by popular sovereignty Both pro-slavery and anti-slavery people moved there to influence the vote. So much violence took place that the time period was called “Bleeding Kansas”

BLEEDING KANSAS

DRED SCOTT DECISION A slave from Missouri who temporarily lived as a free man with his master in free states attempted to sue the government for his freedom, but LOST because blacks weren’t citizens who had the right to sue.

JOHN BROWN’S RAID A white abolitionist John Brown attempted to raid the place where the Federal government stored their weapons and kill white slave-owners.

JOHN BROWN’S RAID The raid failed, but the fact that a white man was willing to kill in order to help blacks, put extreme FEAR into slave-owners

LINCOLN- DOUGLAS DEBATES Before Abraham Lincoln became President, he was in a series of highly popular debates with Senator Stephen Douglas over the issue of slavery.

ELECTION OF 1860 Abraham Lincoln, from the anti-slavery) Republican Party was elected President of the United States, which angered southerners.

IMPORTANT !!!!!!!!! President Lincoln was only against slavery from SPREADING INTO NORTHERN TERRITORY. He NEVER believed that Blacks were equal. His goal was to prevent the south from seceding.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races .”

UNCLE TOM’S CABIN Books like “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” stirred up more HATRED of the South because it exposed the ugliness of how slaveholder’s behaved.

FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT Any slave found hiding in the North was to be returned immediately to the South and forced back into slavery.

SECESSION The southern states strongly disagreed with the north and formed their OWN government called the Confederate States of America.

HYPOCRISY !!!!!!! While abolitionists are credited for being against slavery. Many of them did not want to live with blacks or encourage race-mixing

IOWA The state of Iowa passed a law that banned new blacks from moving into the state.

LIBERIA Abolitionists set up the country of Liberia in Africa for freed Blacks to live, instead of living with them in America.