The Compromise Of 1850

Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was made in 1850, to help the problem of California being turned into a free or slave state. In order to please the North, it proposed California would be admitted as a free state and the slave trade would be abolished in Washington D.C. In order to please the South it proposed that Congress would not pass laws regarding slavery for the rest of the territories won from Mexico, and Congress would pass a stronger law to help slaveholders recapture runaway slaves. Senator Henry Clay helped create this compromise. Stephen A. Douglas succeeded in having this law passed. Some people were happy with this law, but instead of solving the problem it created even more tension between the North and South. It did
During the time of the election in March 1855 there were more supporters of slavery than opposers in the territory, but they did not want to risk losing the election so they got five thousand people from Missouri to vote in the election illegally. The Kansas legislature was full of proslavery representatives. Anti-Slavery boycotted and protested the government. They made a government of their own. In May 1855, a proslavery mob attacked the town of Lawrence, Kansas. They destroyed offices and the house of the governor of the antislavery government. The attack became known as the Sack of Lawrence. For revenge on what the supporters of slavery did in Lawrence, John Brown and seven other men went to the cabins of many proslavery neighbors and murdered five people. This attack is known as the Pottawatomie Massacre named after the creek the bodies were found. Civil war broke out in Kansas and lasted for three years thanks to this violence. The territory was later called “Bleeding Kansas.” This caused a lot of
Douglas in 1858. The Republicans charged that the Democrats wanted to legalize slavery in all the states not just in U.S. territory. They used this to attack many democrats, especially the sponsor of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Stephen A. Douglas. Illinois Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln to challenge Stephen A. Douglas for his U.S. Senate seat. In his first campaign speech, he communicated how the North was afraid that the South wanted to expand slavery to the whole nation. He said, “A House divided against itself cannot stand,” which is from the Bible, “-I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved-I do not expect the house to fall-but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all other.” Abraham Lincoln said this in Springfield, Illinois, June 16,1858. They both had many debates throughout the year. They talked about the expansion of slavery. Lincoln was against the expansion of slavery. He said slavery was “a moral, a social, and a political wrong” and said that African Americans had rights under the Declaration of Independance, but he never said slavery should be abolished. Douglas said that popular sovereignty was the best way to address slavery because it was the most democratic. The Supreme Court said popular sovereignty was unconstitutional because people can not