John Calhoun of South Carolina (the 7th Vice President of the US) was among the Southerners who resisted Northern efforts to introduce abolitionist laws in Congress. He died in 1850, just as the anti-slavery movement was growing.
The Southerners wanted slavery to move to the western territories. They wanted their already booming economy to be spread into the new states. However, they reached conflict with the Northerners who were not in favor of slavery. The Kansas- Nebraska Act allowed the citizens to vote whether or not they were for slavery caused major problems. This increased tensions between the opposing states. Before Abraham Lincoln's election, the country struggled on the issue of secession. When he took office in 1861, things reached their breaking point and the first Southern states seceded.
The Compromise of 1850 did not allow any choice in the matter. It reflected the increasing difficulty of creating new slave-states. It was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 that allowed the people of those two territories to vote on the slavery question. The only time it was tried (in Kansas), it led to terrible bloodshed, and was not tried again. The result was that Kansas rejected slavery.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
The principal topic of the Lincoln-Douglas debates was slavery. Specifically, Lincoln thought that all the territories (the parts of the United States that were not yet States) should be free of slavery, and that eventually, the federal government should outlaw slavery everywhere in the U.S., while Douglas thought that each territory should decide for itself whether it wanted to allow slavery or not.
The Compromise of 1850 allowed California to be admitted to the Union as a free state on September 9, 1850. The Utah Territory and the New Mexico Territory were formed by the Compromise of 1850 and these two territories could permit or prohibit slavery as a local option (popular sovereignty).
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was written by Senator Stephen A. Douglas. The act allowed the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery through the principle of popular sovereignty. This led to violent conflicts known as "Bleeding Kansas" as pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers rushed into the territories to influence the outcome.
The Free-Soil Party wanted to allow slavery in the new territories.
The Free-Soil Party wanted to allow slavery in the new territories.
maintain political power by ensuring that new states admitted to the Union would allow slavery, preserve the economic benefits of slavery for the southern plantation system, and protect the social hierarchy that relied on slavery for labor. This desire to expand slavery into western territories ultimately fueled tensions between the North and South, leading to the American Civil War.
The Dred Scott v. Sandford decision in 1857 established that territorial voters did not have the authority to ban or allow slavery; this decision held that Congress was the sole authority on the issue of slavery in the territories.
John Calhoun of South Carolina (the 7th Vice President of the US) was among the Southerners who resisted Northern efforts to introduce abolitionist laws in Congress. He died in 1850, just as the anti-slavery movement was growing. The Southerners wanted slavery to move to the western territories. They wanted their already booming economy to be spread into the new states. However, they reached conflict with the Northerners who were not in favor of slavery. The Kansas- Nebraska Act allowed the citizens to vote whether or not they were for slavery caused major problems. This increased tensions between the opposing states. Before Abraham Lincoln's election, the country struggled on the issue of secession. When he took office in 1861, things reached their breaking point and the first Southern states seceded.
The Compromise of 1850 did not allow any choice in the matter. It reflected the increasing difficulty of creating new slave-states. It was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 that allowed the people of those two territories to vote on the slavery question. The only time it was tried (in Kansas), it led to terrible bloodshed, and was not tried again. The result was that Kansas rejected slavery.
The Confederacy was composed of states that wanted slavery. That was the main purpose of the split between the Union and the Confederacy. For that reason, it's implied that all the territories had slavery. Even if the Confederacy had allowed the people to determine whether there was slavery in their area or not, they would have chosen slavery because the vast majority of the people in the South were for slavery because it was their way of life.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 allowed voters in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide whether to allow slavery through popular sovereignty. This overturned the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which prohibited slavery in territories north of a certain latitude.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
New Mexico and Utah
The person that proposed the idea was Senator StephenA. Douglas. He wanted to abandon the MKissouri Compromise and let the settlers in each territory vote on whether to allow slavery.
The new territories were made up of whites witch also wanted slaves to work on their plantations so they could make a profit so the slaves were being sold for more money and therefore meant that they were higher in value to people