Slavery During The Antebellum Era

As the antebellum era came to an end, the issue of slavery became more controversial among the Union. Along the expansion of US territory came the debate on the status of slavery in the newly acquired territory. Laws and legislatures attempted establish its status in a way that pleased both Northerners and Southerners, but after the creation of the Confederacy, the Civil War was inevitable. During the latter part of the antebellum era, reforms such as the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act fostered both immediate and long term changes to the lives of African Americans, returning free African Americans to their lives of slavery and forcing them to flee to Canada; however, the Missouri Compromise maintained
By 1819, Missouri applied for statehood as a slave state. In order to prevent an imbalance in congress, Missouri was admitted only along Maine, which was admitted as a free state. Besides granting Missouri’s request, the Missouri Compromise also defined a 36°30' line that divided the free North from the South’s slavery. As a result, the compromise succeeded in delaying the break of the Union and maintained a balance in congress. In 1857, Dred Scott, a former slave, took his case to the Supreme Court. In Dred Scott v. Standard, Scott claimed since he lived in Wisconsin, north of the 36°30 line, he was free. But the Fifth Amendment, which considered slaves property and allowed owners to take property wherever they wished, declared him property. The ruling allowed slavery to legally exist once again throughout the Union, upholding the continuity of a life of slavery for African Americans in both the North and the
Douglas, the Kansas-Nebraska Act declared that the issue of slavery would be decided through popular sovereignty in the states of Kansas and Nebraska, which resulted in the repealing of the Missouri Compromise. Northerners became enraged, igniting the civil war in Kansas. Peace was maintained in Nebraska due to the fear Missouri would become surrounded by free states on three sides, providing slaves many routes to escape if southerners lost the wars in both Kansas and Nebraska. However, Bleeding Kansas, the small civil that resulted from the vast population of both antislavery northerners and proslavery southerners in Kansas, further heightened the tension between the North and South regarding slavery, ultimately triggering the Civil War. Without "Bleeding Kansas" which derived from the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Civil War would have been further postponed, but instead it brought long-term change into the lives of African Americans, which over time led to their