Реферат: From Oppressed Slaves To Champion Soldiers Essay

By the 1800’s, northerners viewed slavery as wrong and began a movement to end it.

Even though an antislavery minority existed in the South, most Southerners found

slavery to be highly profitable and in time came to consider it a positive good. Such

situations as the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act raised tensions

between the North and the South. The Compromise of 1850 was a group of acts

passed by Congress in the hope of settling the dreaded slavery question by satisfing

both the North and South. The Compromise allowed slavery to continue where it

desired, but the trading of slaves was prohibited in Washington DC. New territories

would have the choice to decide whether to permit slavery or not. This act also

required that the North return escaped slaves to their owners. The Kansas-Nebraska

Act dealt with the problem of Slavery in new territories. This Act allowed slavery in

Nebraska and Kansas. It also provided that when the people of each territory o!

rganized as a state, they could decide by popular vote whether to permit slavery to

continue. The Dred Scott Decision, where a slave claimed freedom because he had

lived in a free state and territory for some time, was denied his freedom. The Supreme

Court declared that no black could be a US citizen. The ruling aroused anger in the

North and showed that the conflict over slavery was beyond judicial solutions. Another

situation was the raid at Harpers Ferry. An abolitionist named John Brown and his

followers attempted to start a slave rebellion by seizing the federal arsenal in Harpers

Ferry, Va. Brown, however, was captured 28 hours later by troops under the command

of Colonel Robert E. Lee. Brown was convicted of treason and hanged two weeks later.

Many Southerners saw the raid as evidence of a Northern plot to end slavery by force.

During the election of 1860, Lincoln was chosen by the Republicans as their party

candidate. The Democrats chose Douglas for their ticket. Lincoln won all electoral votes

of every free state except New Jersey, which awarded him four of its seven votes. He

thus gained a majority of electoral votes and won the election. However, Lincoln

received less than 40 per cent of the popular vote, almost none of which came from

the South. Southerners feared Lincoln would restrict or end slavery.

Before the 1860 presidential election, Southern leaders had urged that the South