The new century saw the United States transformed by exponential growth through land acquisitions in the West. This expansion resulted in harm to Native Americans and continued the debate on the “peculiar institution” of slavery. |
Indicator 4-5.5: Explain how the Missouri Compromise, the fugitive slave laws, the annexations of Texas, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Dred Scott decision affected the institution of slavery in the United States and its territories. |
Learning Tasks:
Ø Students will watch the Prezi presentation “Westward Expansion Laws”. They will take notes on the graphic organizer to determine how the law affected the practice of slavery as the United States grew from coast to coast. (DOK 2) Ø Students will view the Discovery Education video clip “The Missouri Compromise” (Segment 5 of 9 in Full Video: “Just the Facts: Documents of Destiny: Nationalism and Change” 4 min. and 17 sec.). They will analyze the video using the video analysis sheet. (DOK 2-3) Ø Students will read closely the text “Bleeding Kansas (Kansas-Nebraska Act)” from Kids InfoBits (Discus). They will analyze the text using the document analysis sheet (DOK 2-3) OR Students will complete the SOS activity individually and with a partner to take a stand on the key idea. (DOK 2-3) Ø Upon completion of the indicator, using the information they have gathered, students are given a law to role-play a skit with their group. Their performance must demonstrate the main idea of the law, as well as the effect the law had on the issue of slavery. After all performances of the laws are complete, they will complete a personal reflection in their notebook about which law they felt had the greatest impact on the issue of slavery. (DOK 3- 4) Ø ** Achieve3000 article- “Westward Expansion: New States, New Troubles” could be assigned, completed in small group or as a workstation task. |
It is essential for students to know:
As American moved west, the United States added more territories raising the issue of whether or not to allow slavery in these new states. The national government passed legislation that affected the institution of slavery in the territories. By the time of the Missouri Compromise in 1820 there was much controversy over slavery. The cotton gin had been invented and southern states were even more dependent on slave labor than they had been at the time of the American Revolution. Northern states were gradually emancipating their slaves. Some northerners wanted slaves in Missouri to be gradually emancipated as well. Southern states worried that they would lose power in Congress if there were more free states than there were slave states. Already representatives of the free northern states outnumbered the representatives from the slave states in the House of Representatives because of population increase due to immigration, so the South was even more determined to hold on to equal representation in the Senate. The Compromise tried to avoid future controversy by prohibiting slavery in the Louisiana Territory, north of the 36 30’ latitude line that was the southern boundary of Missouri. The admission of Missouri, which precipitated the national slavery and balance-of-power questions, was balanced by the simultaneous admission of Maine as a free state, setting a precedent for the admission of states that averted sectional strife by balancing power (numbers of slave and free states and therefore numbers of senators) until the admission of California in 1850. The annexation of Texas was delayed for nine years because the Republic of Texas wanted to be admitted to the United States as a slave state. Texas was finally annexed as a slave state in 1845 and the resulting Mexican War led to more controversy over slavery. Some northerners wanted Congress to declare that all parts of the territory that was from Mexico (the Mexican cession) would be “free soil.” That is, that slavery would be prohibited in this region. Southerners wanted the area to be open to slavery. The Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act was the result of California applying to be admitted to the union. After the discovery of gold in 1849, people flocked to California to get rich quick. They did not want to compete with slave owners who would use their slaves to mine for gold. Because Californians wanted their state to also be “free soil” they applied for admission as a free state. This would upset the balance of slave and free states. The Compromise allowed California to be a free state but also outlawed the slave trade, but not slavery itself, in the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C. It also allowed the remainder of the Mexican Cession to decide whether or not the residents wanted to be a slave or free state though a vote, a concept known as popular sovereignty. Southerners also were also delighted with a new Fugitive Slave Law that gave them more opportunity to have their escaped slaves caught and returned to their masters in the South. This last provision caused much controversy as free African Americans were required to provide necessary proof or run the risk of being taken and sold in the South, a scenario made worse by unscrupulous slave catchers who often ignored or destroyed proffered proof. In defiance of this latter provision, many Northern states passed personal liberty laws that legalized disobedience of the fugitive slave law. The Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) was also the result of westward expansion. The Kansas Territory was in the Northern part of the Louisiana Territory and therefore, according to the Missouri Compromise, it could not be a slave state. However, some politicians wanted to build a transcontinental railroad through Kansas and they needed to get southern support. The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the 36 30’ slavery line (in the Louisiana Purchase) of the Missouri Compromise. It allowed people in these territories to instead decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders through the concept of ‘popular sovereignty.’ The concept, however, had not taken into account people’s misguided willingness to move to a territory temporarily for the express purpose of being there to influence the vote (called “squatter sovereignty)! In order to affect that vote, northern abolitionists (free-staters) and southern slave owners (slave-staters) moved into the Kansas Territory until the election and violence predictably erupted between towns purposefully populated by opposing camps. Soon their fighting led people to call the area “Bleeding Kansas.” The Dred Scott decision (1858) was a test case taken by the Supreme Court (which was comprised of a majority of proslavery Southerners) to settle the controversy over slaves taken (or escaped to) areas where slavery was not legal. Dred Scott was a slave whose master had taken him into free territory. With the help of northern abolitionists, Scott sued his master for his freedom, claiming ‘once free, always free.’ The Supreme Court decided that African Americans were not citizens of the United States, even if they had been born in the U.S., and therefore they had to right to sue in the Supreme Court. Furthermore, the court ruled that slaves were instead property and, as such, they had no rights at all and could thus be taken anywhere in the United States. By extension, this ruling meant that slavery was legal throughout the United States and this concept then affected all legislation that Congress had passed regarding the expansion of slavery into the western territories and states, beginning with the Missouri Compromise. Instead of settling the controversy over slavery, the Dred Scott decision fanned the flames of sectional discord further. Northerners saw the ruling as denying them the right to outlaw slavery in their states as well as in the territories through popular sovereignty, thus creating an entire country in which slavery was legalized, and democracy was limited. Southerners, on the other hand, were overjoyed. Sectional distrust and discord was at its zenith at this point when radical abolitionist John Brown (infamous after Kansas) reappeared, this time in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. |