| Westward Expansion
Frederick Jackson Turner, the great historian of the late 19th
century, said it was on the frontier that democracy was born, that
American ideas equality were born, individualism. But the frontier also
carried with it the expansion of slavery. The westward expansion of
slavery was one of the most dynamic economic and social processes going
on in this country. The westward expansion carried slavery down into the
Southwest, into Mississippi, Alabama, crossing the Mississippi river
into Louisiana. Finally, by the 1840's, it was pouring into Texas. So
the expansion of slavery, which became the major political question of
the 1850's, was not just a political issue. It was a fact of life that
every American had experienced during this period. ----Eric
Foner, historian
As westward expansion took hold, the question of whether the United
States would be a proslavery or antislavery nation took on new
importance. In the North, antislavery forces included
abolitionists, who wanted a future without slavery so that black people
could be free, and Free Soil advocates, who resented having to compete
with owners of slave-tended plantations wanted a future for themselves
and their prosperous way of life, which depended on the institution of
slavery.
The Kansas-Nebraska act in 1854 brought antislavery and proslavery
proponents head-to- head in a battle over the status of Kansas. Slavery
had been prohibited in the Great Plains territories under the Missouri
Compromise of 1820.
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With the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Nebraska territory
was divided into north and south, and the question of whether slavery
would be legal in either part was left to popular referendum.
The southern part, Kansas, soon became a battleground. Free-Soil
settlers were recruited from the northeast, while secret societies on
the Missouri border vowed to combat these "negro thieves."
Most of the northern settlers were not abolitionists, but members of the
Free Soil movement, a group of homesteaders who wanted to keep
slaveholders and blacks, whether free or enslaved, from competing with
them for land. The clash between proslavery and antislavery forces led
to a series of violent outbreaks that historians have called Bleeding
Kansas, a preview of the Civil War. More than 50 men died before Kansas
declared itself a free state.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act led to the birth of
the Republican Party, which promoted an anti-slavery interpretation of
the Constitution. Abolitionists found a home within this larger
political organization that, while not abolitionist, was against the
spread of slavery.
The debate over free versus slave territories reached a new pitch
with the case of Dred Scott. In 1847 Dred Scott sued for his freedom on
the grounds that his master had brought him to live in free land. Ten
years later his case was decided by the Supreme Court, which handed down
the infamous decision that Scott could not sue because he was not a
citizen of the United States and that no one of African origin could
ever become a citizen. |