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Megan Courtney Hist 373 Ian Hartman 12-14-10 Controlling the Nation

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From its early history, America had two main cultures forming into two separate and distinct regions. In the Southern regions, a slave culture set into place, causing large plantation owners to become dependent on free labor. However, in the northern regions, floods of immigrants allowed large factories to be built on the cheap labor. Each of these regions had their own stake in the Union, at times causing problems or exaggerating them. For a chance to claim their stakes, both the northern region and southern region of the country tried to control the future of the union. Control came in a few forms. With the expansion into the west, and the incoming states needed to decide whether they would come in as a free state or a slave state. For these problems, which each group had it s own opinion on how to handle, would a source of tension, often helping to widen the gap between the northern and southern regions. Compromise after compromise shifted control from one region to another, while the federal government tried to keep the balance of power. In 1820, the nation was ready to admitted a new state in to the nation. Missouri wanted to enter the nation as a slave holding state. That would have upset the careful balance that had allowed Congress to function. There was a great upset as the southern region would have the control over Congress, and thus the federal government. Henry Clay proposed the first of many compromises that he would produce in hope of balancing control within the congress. The Missouri

Courtney, Page 2 Compromise brought Missouri in as a free state, and Maine as a free state. So the balance of control remained in Congress. To avoid future problems in upsetting the balance of control in congress, the 36-30 was created. Any states coming into the Union north of the 36-30 would be a free state, and any southern states would be slave states. Representation of slave vs. free would remain balanced. Despite the goals of keeping a balance within Congress, there were those who were upset. As one North Carolinian stated, the Congress had the right to control slavery within the territories, however the compromise would one day bring control to the northern states. Thomas Jefferson had a much darker take on the Missouri Compromise; as it would one destroy the Union, for the compromise permanently drew the political line along regional territory.1 Looking forward from that point in time, control would eventually go to the free states with in the Northern region. Looking at home the country had been expanding at that time, more land would becoming into the union north of the 36-30 line as opposed to the states that would come in south of the union. More importantly, the Missouri Compromise highlighted what would become two very distinct regions. Soon the Missouri Compromise would come to an end as Stephan Douglass made a lobby to put control with in the northern region. Douglass agreed that the Missouri Compromise would be abolished, in creation of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. It was Stephan Douglass opinion that, [t]here is but one possible way in which slavery can be abolished, and that is by leaving a State perfectly free to form and
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Bruce Levine Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of Civil War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2005), page 16.

Courtney, Page 3 regulate its institution in its own way.


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Now, any state that wanted to be admitted

into the Union would vote on the decision on whether to be a slave state, or a free state. This was called popular sovereignty. In return, Chicago would become the new hub for the railroads. This was an interesting compromise on Douglass part. While this may have allowed slavery to enter territory it had not formally been allowed, it gave a different type of control to the Northern region. The north now had control over the train system. It also kept industrial business more closely tied to the Northern region of the United States. However, not everyone agreed with Stephan Douglass on the positive affects that the Kansas-Nebraska Act brought to the country. Henry Wilson was an early historian for Massachusetts and a member of the early Republican Party. Wilson predicts that with such co-operation as the known sympathy of the other slaveholding States would afford, could easily throw into Kansas a sufficient population to give to slavery the necessary preponderance.
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An early prediction

for the problems that would stem from the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In hopes of giving themselves more control within Congress, residents of slaveholding would cross into Kansas to vote for slavery. The destruction of the Missouri Compromise, which was going to give more control to the Northern, free regions of the United States. However, the Kansas-Nebraska Act affectively gave control to which ever state could

Kenneth M. Stampp The Causes of the Civil War (New York: Simon & SchusterInc., 1995), page 109. 3 IBID. Page 32

Courtney, Page 4 cross into the new forming state. However, Douglass had people who were willing to back him with the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Douglass rattled Congress when he proposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Senators from the Southern states jumped at the control that the Act would give to the slaveholding region. One southern senator, James Henry Hammond, arrived in Washington unsure on how he was going to vote on the Kansas-Nebraska Act. When he confided in fellow southerner congressman, William Gilmore Simms, Simms responded sharply with, [y]ou cannot vote with indifference upon a subject which, you admit, involves the honour, if not the safety of the South[.]
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The Southern

regions and their Congressmen saw a more important opportunity than securing the railroad lines. This was an opportunity to secure control over any and all future states, regardless of whether the states were in the northern region or the southern region of the country. This fight for control broke out in violence across the nation. The Kansas-Nebraska Act quickly set up two opposing governments within Kansas. People crossing in from Missouri bolstered proslavery advocates in Kansas. They destroyed antislavery newspapers and ransacked the homes and businesses that were thought to have antislavery affiliation.5 The violence quickly became known as Bloody Kansas. The violence did not remain in Kansas, as it spread to Washington DC. In Congress, South Carolinian representative Preston S. Brooks

Drew Gilpin Faust, James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), pages 344-45. 5 Levine, Page 196

Courtney, Page 5 attack Senator Charles Sumner for his speech The Crime Against Kansas .6 This outbreak in violence in Congress shows that the power for control has become important to the future of the nation. Within the United States, control over Congress created compromise after compromise shifted control in the hopes of finding a balance between the slaveholding southern regions and the free northern regions. The creation of the Missouri Compromise, it created balance, but would come to shift control eventually to the northern territories. However, when the creation of the Kansas-Nebraska Act canceled out the Missouri Compromise, control became up in the air. The conflict of Bleeding Kansas was an early sign of the violence. The desire that both regions had to control that would result in the most devastating conflict, the American Civil War.

Levine, Page 196

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