The Debate over Slavery

1. The Debate over Slavery Chapter 18

2. The Expansion of Slavery The Capitol in 1846 The Missouri Compromise

3. The Expansion of Slavery • Slavery in the Mexican Cession • President James K. Polk and others wanted the Missouri Compromise line to extend to the Pacific, to divide the Mexican Cession into free and slave territory. • Some northerners wanted to prohibit slavery in all of the Mexican Cession. • The Wilmot Proviso, which Congress never passed, would have banned slavery in the entire Mexican Cession. • The debate showed the sectionalism, or the favoring of one region’s interests over the interests of the country as a whole, that gripped the United States. • Some people wanted to allow the settlers in new territories to decide whether to allow slavery in those areas, a method called popular sovereignty.

4. The Expansion of Slavery The Election of 1848 Democrats and Whigs did not take a clear stand on the slavery issue. Supporters of the Wilmot Proviso formed the Free- Soil Party. Zachary Taylor, the Whig candidate, narrowly won the presidential election.

5. The Expansion of Slavery The California Problem California applied for admission to the Union. Most Californians wanted to enter the Union as a free state. Many southerners opposed the addition of another free state, because it would upset the balance between slave and free states in the U.S. Congress.

6. The Compromise of 1850 • California would enter as a free state. • Popular sovereignty would decide the issue of slavery in the rest of the Mexican Cession, which would be organized as the Territory of New Mexico. • Congress to pay Texas’s debts to end dispute between Texas and New Mexico. • Ended the slave trade- but not slavery- in Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital. • Created a more effective fugitive slave law. Henry Clay offered a compromise to resolve the debate over slavery in the Mexican Cession and the admission of California to the Union

7. The Compromise of 1850 • Responses • Some antislavery northerners wanted to admit California without any restrictions. • Some southerners rejected the proposal because it would upset the balance between the two sections of the country. • Daniel Webster, a senator from Massachusetts, favored the plan because he thought that preserving the Union was more important than regional differences. • Congress passed Clay’s proposal, known as the Compromise of 1850.

8. The Compromise of 1850

9. The Fugitive Slave Act • The Fugitive Slave Act made it at federal crime to help runaway slaves. • The law let officials arrest fugitives even where slavery was illegal and paid officials who returned fugitives more than if the officials rejected the slaveholders’ claims. • Many northerners opposed the law because it denied runaway slaves a trial by jury. • When a group of northerners unsuccessfully attempted to free Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave from Virginia, a deputy marshal was killed.

10. Poster warning freed slaves.

11. Antislavery Literature • Abolitionists published tales of fugitive slaves to build support for their cause. • Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, about a cruel slaveholder. • The bestselling novel was praised in the North, but condemned in the South.