lthough several attempts at compromise sought to resolve the ever-growing divide between the North and South, these desperate efforts only postponed the inevitable. Tensions surrounding states’ rights, western expansion, and the rise of the abolitionist movement made compromise impossible by 1860 and led to southern secession.
The conflict between individual state power versus federal power reappeared and further separated the country, as southerners fought to protect their agrarian economy. The passing of the Tariff of 1828 sparked southern protest. The tariff bill imposed high tariffs on imported goods, in an attempt to protect the North’s manufacturing industries. The protective tariff would raise the price of foreign imports and discourage …show more content…
The Wilmot Proviso was a proposed bill that would forbid slavery to be expanded into any new western territories. The South argued that slaves were property and slaveholders had the right to take their slaves into any territory. The act was not passed but it ignited the debate over slavery. The possible admission of California and New Mexico as free states in 1849, outraged southerners enough to threat secession. The Compromise of 1850 would try to settle this problem by admitting California as a free state, establishing popular sovereignty in the territories of New Mexico and Utah, abolishing the slave trade in DC and enacting a Fugitive Slave Act. The Fugitive Slave Act forced Northern authorities to return runaways back to the South. The act was a win for the South but enraged abolitionists and perpetuated the anti-slavery cause in the North. The Kansas-Nebraska Act renewed these sectional tensions when it replaced the Missouri Compromise with popular sovereignty and opened the Kansas and Nebraska territories to slavery. In protest of the replacement of the Missouri Compromise the North denied the Fugitive Slave Act. Meanwhile in Kansas the Act had led to violent conflict. The formation of two illegal governments in the territory, one pro-slavery and the other anti-slavery, gave rise to its own civil war …show more content…
Abolitionists demanded an end to slavery under moral values and the constitutional belief that “all men are created equal”. In the “Declaration of the National Anti-Slavery Convention”, a report of the American Anti-Slavery Society, abolitionists issued a public call for immediate emancipation and declared any law permitting slavery a violation of God’s will (Doc B). When abolitionists turned to Congress for support, they got nowhere. In an effort to avoid controversy the House of Representatives tabled all abolition petitions, known as the “gag rule” (Doc C). The enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 sent a wave of outrage throughout the North. Anthony Burns, a runaway slave, was arrested in Boston by federal marshals. In protest a mob of 2,000 abolitionists gathered to free Burns, an effort that failed but demonstrated to the nation the magnitude of the anti-slavery sentiment in the North. The most extreme display of the anti-slavery cause would come in 1859. The Raid on Harper’s Ferry led by a radical abolitionist, John Brown, was an effort to incite a slave insurrection by capturing a federal arsenal to arm slaves. Brown was captured and tried for treason. His raid failed but remained a martyr for Northern abolitionists and sent fear and paranoia throughout the South. The abolition movement was powered by more than politics, its message stood for a