7 RT 17 (Copy)

Jayson De Vera Gonzalez, Language Arts 7 Last modified: 12.4.2023 [7 RT No. 17]

The title of the book I read is American History: A Visual Encyclopedia. This week I continued to read Chapter 4 which talks about how tensions between the North and South arose in the 1850s because of the usage of slavery. It is also about the Underground Railroad.

In the 1850s, tensions arose to a whole new level between the North and South states as it reached the boiling point over the usage of slavery. A lot of Northerners saw that it was incompatible with a free society and country while Southerners felt that their right to decide their way of life was being attacked. The brawl soon became centered on whether to authorize the usage of slavery to expand into new territories that had large enough populations to become states. Both the North and South wanted the territories to follow their lead in deciding whether the fairly new nation would continue to allow legal slavery.

In the year 1850, the California territory to the west of the United States was admitted into the Union as a state. Since the Missouri Compromise of 1820, there has been an equal amount of states where legal slavery was permitted and states where slavery would be illegal. Henry Clay, the Speaker of the House, wanted to maintain this balance of equality to avoid conflict in the future. He thought that if California entered the Union as a free state, anti-slavers should compromise and allow people who lived in territories such as Utah and New Mexico to vote on whether to or to not allow legal slavery. Clay’s compromise was debated in the Senate for seven months. John C. Calhoun, a South Carolina senator was so ill that a friend had to read his speech declaring that the compromise would break in two “the cords that bind us together,” forcing South Carolina to exit the Union. When Daniel Webster; a Massachusetts senate, gave a great speech of approval, the Compromise of 1850 was soon passed after.

The Fugitive Slave of 1793 stated that slaves who had escaped must be returned to their masters who were in the South. The law wasn’t enforced in places in the North because of local personal liberty laws or the anti-slavery ideals of the residents living in the North. However, part of the Compromise of 1850 gave slaveowners more power to go after escaped slaves and imposed big penalties on those who interfered with the capture of their property. This new law made the cruelty of slavery vivid to a lot of Northerners. In the year 1852, the residents of the city of Syracuse in New York were outraged when an escaped slave, Jerry McHenry, was seized by U.S. Marshals and led through the streets in chains. Abolitionist ministers were able to break out McHenry out of jail and were able to lead him to safety through the underground railroad which was a network of abolitionists who hid slaves and guided them to freedom and safety in other territories, such as Mexico, Canada, or Northern states. They were led to freedom, but often, escaped slaves could not be helped and were recaptured by their masters.

On October 16, 1859, A wild-eyed abolitionist named John Brown led a small group of men in a raid on a federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Brown, who had fought against pro-slavers in Kansas a few years before, planned to use the arsenal’s weapons to arm a great slave rebellion. The raid was quickly diffused by the army and militia under Colonel Robert E. Lee. brown and six others were tried, convicted, and executed. Many northerners, while horrified by the situation, considered Brown a martyr to the cause of freedom. Southerners were worried because they feared the event was a sign that abolitionists were taking control of the North. In the year 1852, Senator Stephen A. Douglas proposed that the residents vote yes or no to decide whether to have slavery when they became a state and were admitted to the Union. People who didn’t live in Kansas or Nebraska but who were for slavery moved to the territories just long enough to vote. This swayed the vote and the pro-slavers won. Defying the result, angry “free-soilers” moved to the town of Lawrence, Kansas, to create a government that didn’t authorize slavery. Violence erupted in the city of Lawrence in the year 1856.” Bleeding Kansas” the so-called event claimed more than 200 lives before the United States Army established order.

In 1857, Northerners who opposed the usage of slavery received another shock when the Supreme Court ruled against a slave named Dred Scott who was suing for his freedom. Scott’s owners had brought him with them from the South to a Northern free state to live. The Court declared that it did not matter whether Scott lived in a slave state or free state because slaves were considered property of someone and owners could take their property wherever or whenever they pleased. Most Southerners were glad with the situation, which meant that slavery could be extended into any territory, whether voters approved it or not. In 1858, Abraham Lincoln emerged as the leading figure in the republican party following a series of seven separate debates with Stephen A. Douglas, the Democratic senator from Illinois. The debates were part of a Senate race in which Lincoln was running against the popular incumbent. They debated the issue of slavery in the territories. The short, stout Douglas, known as the “little giant,” and Abraham Lincoln, a tall, bony frontier lawyer, attracted large crowds and gained national attention. Both men opposed slavery, but Lincoln insisted that there should be no expansion of slavery in new territories. Douglas proposed a theory that he called “Popular Sovereignty,” which relied on a vote of people in each territory. Douglas won reelection, but Abraham Lincoln had appealed to a wide range of voters across the country.

The survival of America as one unified nation was in doubt when Abraham Lincoln a Republican won the 1860 presidential election. Southerners had warned that they would not remain loyal to the Union with a president who did not support their position on slavery. Lincoln’s election led seven states in the South to secede and leave the Union and form a new country, the Confederate States of America. Four more states followed in 1861. When Southern artillery on Fort Sumter, a military fort in South Carolina controlled by the U.S. Army, the North and South were at war. Early in 1860, the two major political parties held their conventions to choose presidential candidates. The democratic party was split. Democrats in the North chose Stephen Douglas, who supported letting the territories decide themselves whether to allow or forbid slavery. Democrats in the South chose pro-slavery candidate John C. Breckinridge. Republicans were confident of victory since the Democrats did not support a single candidate. They chose Abraham Lincoln. Republicans didn’t focus on only slavery though; they called for a railroad to be built that would cross the entire continent, and for the homestead law to make it easy and simple for settlers to purchase land. This appealed to voters in the West. Even with the democratic vote split in half, it was an extremely close election. Lincoln was elected President. This is what I read this week.

The two Bible verses I read are Jeremiah 29:12 and Ephesians 2:10. The first one, Jeremiah 29:12 means to me that if we pray to God, he will listen to us. The second one means to me that we are God’s creation, and we are to do good work, which God had prepared in advance.

Thank You for reading.