1. The Question of Slavery:
The Voice of Abolition is Raised

2. Several Northern governments passed laws to undermine the FSA!
The Fugitive Slave Act
Part of the Compromise 1850
Allowed slave owners to retrieve “property” in any territory (free or slave)
Was based upon a simple description
Fugitives were denied trial by jury & unable to present evidence (free blacks could be enslaved)
Several Northern governments passed laws to undermine the FSA!

3. Uncle Tom’s Cabin - 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe (Conn)
Portrayed Southern slaves owners as evil
Exposed the brutality of slavery
many parts of the book were fictionalized
Created black stereotypes that last for a hundred years
Created a literary backlash-
N books were banished
S cried for sectionalism

4. Bleeding Kansas Shows flaw in Comp of 1850 Threat to allow slavery in
forbidden territories (Comp 1820)
Kansas and Nebraska were open to
popular sovereignty as slave or free
Abolitionists and free-soilers
go there to keep it free
Slave holders go to make it slave
Violence erupts =
Bleeding Kansas

5. Dred Scott v. Sanford
MO slave Dred Scott is taken to free IL and MN w/ owner
Scott sues for his freedom after they return to MO
Supreme Court denies him
Owner = John Emerson
Sanford is executor of Emerson Estate
Is given freedom in May,1857 and dies a free man

6. Results of Dred Scott Slaves had no claim to freedom
They were property and not citizens
They could not bring suit in federal court
Because slaves were private property, the federal government could not revoke a white slave owner's right to own a slave based on where he lived, nullifying the essence of the Missouri Compromise.
subject to the Fifth Amendment which prohibits taking property from its owner "without due process".

7. 1858 - The Lincoln / Douglas Debates
Republican candidate - Abraham Lincoln
and
Democratic candidate - Stephen Douglas
A lawyer, Lincoln spoke out against the evil slave power of the South
-desired self-interests of white men
-save territories for better conditions for white people
Douglas, a well known orator, was unable to win the heart of Southern voters

8. Douglas and other Democrats split the ticket four ways.
Lincoln would win
-won only on electoral college votes
-did not win the popular vote
Lincoln vowed to follow the position of his party. This concerned the South

10. 1859 - John Brown’s Raid Harpers Ferry, VA -a US arsenal
Planned to attack slaveholders
and draw liberated slaves
to attack and free
plantation slaves
He was hung
December 2, 1859,
Brown was backed by rich
Northerners and abolitionists
Brown uttered a prophetic forewarning of the coming Civil War: "I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood."

11. The South is outraged Lincoln wins!
Republicans felt Southerners would calm down and turn Pro-Union after the election
Southerners felt ignored and put off.
They felt a show of strength was necessary to win N. respect

12. South Carolina secedes from the Union!
December 20, 1860
South Carolina secedes
from the Union!
Mississippi, Florida, Alabama,
Georgia, Louisiana
and Texas followed.
Virginia, North Carolina,
Tennessee and Arkansas
would join later!
Missouri, Kentucky,
Delaware and Maryland:
Slave states that stayed
with the Union
"We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence, and that, or extermination"
-- Jefferson Davis