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Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction: Slavery in the Territories

Class Code: TRCGV3

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ReadWorks | Award-Winning, EdTech Nonprofit Organization

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ReadWorks is an edtech nonprofit organization that is committed to helping to solve America's reading comprehension crisis.

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The Missouri Compromise, also called the Compromise of 1820, was a plan proposed by Henry Clay of the U.S. state of Kentucky. It was signed by President James Monroe and passed in 1820. The agreement was between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the United States Congress, involving primarily the regulation of slavery in the western territories. It admitted Missouri as a slave state to please the South and it also admitted Maine as a free state to please the North. It kept the balance of power in the United States Senate between the free states and slave states. The plan also called for slavery to be banned from the Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 36 degrees 30' north (also known as the Missouri Compromise Line), except within the boundaries of the proposed state of Missouri.

Prior to the agreement, the House of Representatives had refused to accept this compromise and a conference committee was appointed. The United States Senate refused to concur in the amendment, and the whole measure was lost.

During the following session (1819-1820), the House passed a similar bill with an amendment, introduced on January 26, 1820 by John W. Taylor of New York, allowing Missouri into the union as a slave state. The question had been complicated by the admission in December of Alabama, a slave state, making the number of slave and free states equal. In addition, there was a bill in passage through the House (January 3, 1820) to admit Maine as a free state.

The Senate decided to connect the two measures. It passed a bill for the admission of Maine with an amendment enabling the people of Missouri to form a state constitution. Before the bill was returned to the House, a second amendment was adopted on the motion of Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois, excluding slavery from the Missouri Territory north of the parallel 36°30' north (the southern boundary of Missouri), except within the limits of the proposed state of Missouri.

Images for kids

The United States in 1819, the year before the Missouri Compromise prohibited slavery in the unorganized territory of the Great Plains (upper dark green) and permitted it in Missouri (yellow) and the Arkansas Territory (lower blue area)

Representative James Tallmadge Jr., the author of the antislavery amendment to Missouri statehood

Thomas Jefferson: The Missouri crisis roused Thomas Jefferson "like a fire bell in the night".

New York Governor DeWitt Clinton

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The Missouri Compromise, also called the Compromise of 1820, was a plan proposed by Henry Clay of the U.S. state of Kentucky. It was signed by President James Monroe and passed in 1820. The agreement was between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the United States Congress, involving primarily the regulation of slavery in the western territories.

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Uploaded by Bobblehead George on 2014-12-31.

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The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska and was drafted by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and President Franklin Pierce. The initial purpose of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was to open up thousands of new farms and make feasible a Midwestern Transcontinental Railroad.

It also allowed the states to vote on whether slavery was legal or not. This law cancelled the Missouri Compromise, which said that slavery was not legal in those areas. The Act was a key step on the way to the American Civil War.

Background

The availability of tens of millions of acres of fertile farmland in the area made it necessary to create a territorial infrastructure to allow settlement. Railroad interests were especially eager to start operations since they needed farmers as customers. Four previous attempts to pass legislation had failed. The solution was a bill proposed in January 1854 by Douglas - the Democratic Party leader in the US Senate, the chairman of the Committee on Territories, an avid promoter of railroads, an aspirant to the presidency, and a strong believer in popular sovereignty - the policy of letting the voters, almost exclusively white males, of a territory decide whether or not slavery should exist in it.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act divided the nation and pointed it toward civil war. The Act itself virtually cancelled out the Missouri Compromise of 1820. The turmoil over the act split both the Democratic and Whig parties and gave rise to the Republican Party, which split the United States into two major political camps, the Republican North and the Democratic South.

Senator Stephen A. Douglas and former Illinois Representative Abraham Lincoln aired their disagreement over the Kansas-Nebraska Act in seven public speeches during September and October 1854. Lincoln gave his most comprehensive argument against slavery and the provisions of the act in Peoria, Illinois, on October 16, the Peoria Speech.

Lincoln's three-hour speech presented thorough moral, legal, and economic arguments against slavery and raised Lincoln's political profile for the first time. The speeches set the stage for the Lincoln-Douglas debates four years later, when Lincoln was running for Douglas's Senate seat.

A new anti-slavery state constitution, known as the Wyandotte Constitution, was eventually drawn up. On January 29, 1861, five weeks before Lincoln's inauguration, Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state. On March 1, 1867, Nebraska was admitted to the Union. By then, the 1861-1865 Civil War had been fought, and slavery itself had been outlawed throughout the United States by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

Images for kids

Sam Houston from Texas was one of the few southern opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In the debate, he urged, " Maintain the Missouri Compromise! Stir not up agitation! Give us peace!"

Charles Sumner on Douglas - "Alas! too often those principles which give consistency, individuality, and form to the Northern character, which renders it staunch, strong, and seaworthy, which bind it together as with iron, are drawn out, one by one, like the bolts of the ill-fitted vessel, and from the miserable, loosened fragments is formed that human anomaly- a Northern man with Southern principles. Sir, no such man can speak for the North."

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The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska and was drafted by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and President Franklin Pierce. The initial purpose of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was to open up thousands of new farms and make feasible a Midwestern Transcontinental Railroad.

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Sound Smart: The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 | History

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Sound Smart: Compromise of 1850 | History

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The Fugitive Slave Acts were two federal laws that concerned runaway slaves in the United States. The two acts were passed in 1793 and in 1850. They required federal involvement in catching runaway slaves in Northern States. The laws were designed to protect Southern slave owners. They required those states and jurisdictions to help in the capture and delivery of fugitive slaves. The laws were very unpopular in the North. They caused a great deal of resentment in the years leading up to the American Civil War.

Background

Slavery in America began in the English colony of Jamestown in 1619. It started with the purchase of 20 Africans from an English warship named the White Lyon. The Colonists in the Virginia Colony bought the contracts of the Africans as indentured servants. Not long after this it became a custom to hold slaves for life in the colonies. During the 17th and 18th centuries, slaves were used to raise crops of tobacco and food crops. After the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, cotton became the most important crop. At this point slavery became a critical part of the South's economy.

The issue of slavery caused difficulties for the United States almost from its beginning as a country. The framers of the Constitution used ambiguous language regarding the holding of slaves. Neither the word "slave" or "slavery" were used in the Constitution. The problem was in creating a democracy that ensured its citizens freedom while keeping a considerable part of the population in slavery without any freedoms.

In the United States, up to the 1860s, slaves and indentured servants were treated as personal property. They were subject to the property laws of the individual states. At first, most of the laws concerned indentured servants. But the laws began to differentiate between indentured servants and slaves around the middle of the 17th century. They also began to differentiate between races. People of African descent began to be held as slaves for life.

Men and women slaves were generally treated the same under most state laws. However, some states had laws that applied only to women slaves. For example, Virginia passed laws punishing women who had children by their masters. They also confirmed the slave status of any children born of a "Negro or mulatto women". Great Britain had a structured system whereby children claimed their lineage through their father. This also applied to illegitimate children (parents were not married). Virginia was the first colony to change this. Slave children were considered the same race and status as the mother, even if the child was fathered by a white man. Laws concerning abuse did not apply to black and Indian women. A slave woman could not defend herself against the attack by a white person. If she did, she was subject to beatings. While it was illegal to have relations with a slave woman, the laws were not usually enforced. This system increased the wealth of slave owners. They did not have to buy slaves if they could breed their own.

Slaves, whether born into slavery or purchased as a slave, had no legal rights. The United States Supreme Court decision Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) confirmed that slaves were not citizens of the United States nor of any state they reside in. In 1868 the Fourteenth Amendment overturned the Dred Scott decision.

Early pro-slavery legislation

Northwest Ordinance 1787

The Northwest Ordinance (1787) was an act of the Congress of the Confederation of the United States (before the United States Constitution). It created the Northwest Territory, the first organized territory of the United States. The Ordinance provided that the territory would be formed into "not less than three nor more than five States".

The territory was made up of lands beyond the Appalachian Mountains. It was south of British North America and the Great Lakes. It was north of the Ohio River. Article VI of the Northwest Ordinance prohibited slavery in the new territory. However, it contained a provision that any fugitive slaves caught in the territory would be returned to their owners. It also did not place any restrictions on slavery within any new states formed from the Northwest Territory. Southerners had no problems with the ban on slavery. They thought that most of the new settlers would come from Southern states. Once a state was formed, the former Southerners would vote to allow slavery. However, none of the states formed from the Northwest Territory ended up allowing slavery.

U.S. Constitution 1789

When the United States Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation in 1789, Article Four of the United States Constitution contained the Fugitive Slave Clause. It states:

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

Fugitive slave acts

Fugitive Slave Act 1793

While Article IV, Section 2 of the United States Constitution did guarantee the right of slave owners to reclaim fugitive slaves. However, it did not set up the legal mechanism. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 passed by the second Congress added that mechanism. It authorized the arrest of runaway slaves and gave any magistrate of a town, city or county to rule on the arrest. The slave hunter only had to state the person captured was a runaway slave. No proof was required and there was no trial. It added a fine of $500 to any person who helped a runaway slave. It was passed in response to the rise of abolitionism in the North and also to the Underground Railroad that was set up to help slaves escape the South.

Fugitive Slave Act 1850

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was a controversial part of the Compromise of 1850. The 1850 slave law added penalties for officials who did not arrest alleged runaway slaves. It fined them $1,000. Any law enforcement official was required to arrest anyone suspected of being a runaway slave. All that was required was a persons sworn testimony of ownership. As before there was no trial and the suspect could not testify on their own behalf. Anyone who provided food or shelter to any suspected runaway slave was subject to six months in prison and a fine of $1,000. An officer who captured a runaway slave would get a bonus or a promotion. The 1850 law provided for special commissioners to decide if the alleged fugitive was to be returned to slavery. He received $10 if the fugitive was returned, but only $5 if the fugitive was freed. This amounted to a legal form of bribery. This caused a large number of free blacks to be sent into slavery.

Results of the slave law

The 1850 Fugitive Slave Law caused outrage in the Northern States. It caused thousands of Northerners to be convinced slavery should not be allowed in the western territories. Eight states in the North passed "personal liberty" laws. These prevented any official from helping to return a runaway slave. Southerners regarded these laws as being illegal attempts to prevent the return of their slaves. In the North, free black communities provided runaway slaves with sanctuary and hid them from the hired kidnappers searching for them. About 15,000 free blacks emigrated to Canada, the Caribbean and Africa after the 1850 law was passed. Thousands of others including free blacks were not so lucky and were sent South.

In 1851, a gun battle broke out between abolitionists and slave catchers in Christiana, Pennsylvania. In Wisconsin a fugitive named Joshua Glover was forcibly freed from a jail. In Boston, a mob tried to free a fugitive named Anthony Burns. It took 22 companies of state troopers to stop them. The Southern states were completely convinced the North would not follow the slave laws.

Images for kids

Enslavement in the 13 colonies, 1770. Numbers show actual and estimated slave population by colony. Colors show the slave population as a percentage of each colony's total population. Boundaries shown are based on 1860 state boundaries, not those of 1770 colonies.

Rufus King's failed resolution to re-implement the slavery prohibition in the Ordinance of 1784.

A Ride for Liberty-The Fugitive Slaves (c. 1862) by Eastman Johnson Brooklyn Museum

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The Fugitive Slave Acts were two federal laws that concerned runaway slaves in the United States. The two acts were passed in 1793 and in 1850. They required federal involvement in catching runaway slaves in Northern States. The laws were designed to protect Southern slave owners.

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Sound Smart: The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 | History

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Kids learn about the biography of Harriet Beecher Stowe, woman who wrote about the horrors of slavery before the Civil War.

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John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry Image

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John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry Image

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John Brown's Antislavery Raid

Class Code: TRCGV3

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ReadWorks | Award-Winning, EdTech Nonprofit Organization

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ReadWorks is an edtech nonprofit organization that is committed to helping to solve America's reading comprehension crisis.

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Kids History: John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid

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Kids learn about John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid during the Civil War. An attempt at a slave uprising to end slavery.

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America's First Terrorist or National Hero?

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Dred Scott was a slave who forever changed the definition of property. After moving to the North with his master he claimed that living in a free state made him a free man. The Missouri Supreme Court found otherwise. Scott, sued his new owner, John Sanford of New York, for damages, alleging physical abuse. A federal court ruled that Scott was a citizen. But the Supreme Court ruled otherwise. Chief Justice Roger Taney, in an 1857 plurality opinion, said that African-Americans could never become United States citizens and that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. Further, the Court said, Congress could not constitutionally exclude slavery from the territories.

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Historian Matthew Pinsker presents a quick rundown of the story of Dred Scott, a slave who sued for his freedom, leading to one of the Supreme Court's most infamous decisions.