The Missouri Compromise (1820) drew an east-west line through the Louisiana Purchase, with slavery prohibited above the line and allowed below, except that slavery was allowed in Missouri, north of the line.
Compromise of 1850
• In the Compromise of 1850, California entered as a free state, while the new Southwestern territories acquired from Mexico would decide on their own.
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 repealed the Missouri Compromise line by giving people in Kansas and Nebraska the choice whether to allow slavery in their states (“popular sovereignty”).
This law produced “Bloody Kansas” as pro- and anti-slavery forces battled each other. It also led to the birth of the Republican party that same year to oppose the spread of slavery.
Sectional tensions were caused by debates over the nature of the Union.
South Carolina argued that sovereign states could nullify acts of Congress. A Union that allowed state governments to invalidate acts of the national legislature could be dissolved by states seceding from the Union in defense of slavery (Nullification Crisis).
President Jackson threatened to send federal troops to collect the tariff revenues from SC.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.”
“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.”
Who said this?
What does it mean?
Slave Revolt!
Nat Turner’s Rebellion in Virginia, (led by Nat Turner and Gabriel Prosser) led to harsh laws in the South against fugitive slaves.
Whites in the south who favored abolition were intimidated into silence.
Abolition Movement
Northerners, led by William Lloyd Garrison, publisher of The Liberator, increasingly viewed the institution of slavery as a violation of Christian principles and argued for its abolition.
