Protest, Resistance, and Violence Chapter 10-2

Fugitive Slave Act  fugitives weren’t entitled to a trial and couldn’t testify on their own behalf  Only needed a statement by slave owner  Incentive to return slaves ($10 given to federal commissioners if returned slave and $5 given if they freed slave)  fined $1,000 and/or jailed for 6 months if you helped a runaway slave

 forbade the imprisonment of runaway slaves and ensured that they would have a jury trial  Trials were often dragged out for 3 or 4 years to increase slave catchers’ expenses Personal liberty laws

 Network of free African Americans & white abolitionists who helped fugitive slaves escape slavery  Hid slaves, gave them food and clothing, helped them get to next stop  Harriet Tubman: escaped slave who helped 300 other slaves escape slavery  Returned to South 19 times – none of the 300 slaves caught Underground Railroad

 “In the woods I lived on nothing…I stayed in the hollow of a big poplar tree for seven months…I suffered mighty bad with the cold and for something to eat. One time a snake come to the tree…and I took my axe and chopped him in two. It was…the poisonest kind of snake we have. While in the woods all my thoughts was how to get away to a free country.” – slave Harry Grimes

Uncle Tom’s Cabin  written by abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852  message: slavery was a moral struggle – not just a political contest  North: abolitionists increased protests of Fugitive Slave Act  South: attack on South as a whole  Sold 300,000 copies in less than a year

 Nebraska Territory was legally closed to slavery – Douglas thought territory would become a free state and a slave state (maintain balance in Senate)  Divided Nebraska Territory into Nebraska (north) & Kansas (south)  repealed Missouri Compromise and established popular sovereignty for both territories 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act

 “If the people of Kansas want a slaveholding state, let them have it, and if they want a free state they have a right to it, and it is not for the people of Illinois, or Missouri, or New York, or Kentucky, to complain, whatever the decision of Kansas may be.” – Douglas

 Northern and Southern settlers rush to Kansas = election held & two governments created  “border ruffians” from Missouri (slave state) voted illegally in Kansas = won a dishonest majority for proslavery and set up a government in Lecompton  abolitionists created their own government in Topeka  Proslavery settlers burned down antislavery town of Lawrence Violence in Kansas

 John Brown: abolitionist who believed God called on him to fight slavery – he and followers attacked 5 pro-slavery men  Thought proslavery men who attacked Lawrence killed 5 men  “Bleeding Kansas”: term given to Kansas Territory due to the violence that occurred there over slavery issue  200 people killed

 MA senator Charles Sumner verbally attacked supporters of slavery in “Crime Against Kansas” Senate speech  Congressman Preston S. Brooks (nephew of SC senator Andrew P. Butler – singled out in Sumner’s speech) beat Sumner over the head with his cane  Sumner suffered shock and brain damage and didn’t return to Senate for 3 years  Southerners: rejoiced  Northerners: example of Southern brutality and opposition toward free speech Violence in Senate