1. 4.1 The Divisive Politics of Slavery
How did slavery divide the nation?

2. Differences Between the North and South
The North and South had developed into very separate regions
The South depended on slavery; the Northern industry did not need it and opposition grew
In 1849, CA asked to enter the Union as a free state; Southerners were angry b/c much of CA was south of the Missouri Compromise Line
They felt that any move to ban slavery was an attack on their way of life and threatened secession, the decision to leave the Union

3. The Compromise of 1850 Henry Clay presented the Compromise of 1850
To please the North, it said that CA would be admitted as a free state
To please the South, it included the Fugitive Slave Act, which required Northerners to return escaped slaves to their masters
It also included popular sovereignty, or the right to vote for or against slavery, for New Mexico and Utah territories

4. Protest, Resistance, Violence
Many Northerners were angry over the Fugitive Slave Act; freed African Americans and white abolitionists organized the Underground Railroad, a secret network of volunteers who hid fugitive slaves on their journey north to freedom
Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave, was a famous ‘conductor’, or worker

5. Continued
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) showed slavery’s horrors to Northerners, while Southerners saw the book as an attack on their way of life
Meanwhile, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 split Nebraska into the territories of Nebraska and Kansas; both could decide whether to allow slavery
Pro and anti slavery people rushed to Kansas to try to sway the vote, which earned it the nickname “Bleeding Kansas” after violence broke out on both sides

6. New Political Parties Emerge
Franklin Pierce, a Democrat, was elected President in 1852
Several new parties appeared in the North:
Free Soil Party: against the extension of slavery but not abolitionist
Know-Nothing Party: supported Nativism and was against immigration; feared slavery competing with the wage labor system in the North
Republicans: formed in 1854 and brought together Free-Soilers, Whigs, Democrats, and nativists

7. Conflicts Lead to Secession
Dredd Scott was a slave who’d been taken to free states for a time and claimed that being in free states had made him free
In 1857, b/c of his case, the Supreme Court ruled that slaves were property protected by the Constitution
Southerners felt that this decision allowed slavery to be extended into the territories

8. Continued
In 1858, Stephen Douglas ran against Abraham Lincoln in Illinois for a Senate seat
They held a series of debates about slavery in the territories that became known as the Lincoln-Douglas debates and made Lincoln famous
He was then nominated for President in 1860; his election was not supported by the South and caused them to secede from the Union in 1860
By Feb. 1861, seven Southern states had seceded; they feared an end to their way of life in the Union and felt they had lost their political power in the US
They formed the Confederacy, with Jefferson Davis as their President