The Civil War: The Slavery Debate

The American Civil War was a civil war fought between the North and the South or the Union and the Confederacy, respectably. This was fought to determine the integrity of the United States as it defeated the bid for independence by the autonomous Confederate States of America. War broke out in April of 1861, the Confederate armies attacked Fort Sumter, and the war was ended by the Confederate Armies surrendering in 1865. The slavery debate revolved around many vital issues. The slavery debate will be discussed through the growing friction between the Confederacy and the Union, the Compromise of 1850, the Dred Scott case, as well as the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
The Union was industrialized and had a much better economy, opposed to the Confederacy
Henry Clay came up with the first attempt at a solution for our nation’s problems. This solution was called the omnibus bill, his hope was that there would be enough support for each issue on the bill that it would be passed, but on the contrary there was far too much controversy. Congress was facing many issued that were sectionally based, and the biggest question that stood is if there would be a continuance of the slave trade to bring to Washington D.C… Daniel C. Calhoun wasn’t Clay’s biggest fan, and hated his bill proposal. He thought it was a way to end slavery in certain degrees, and simply just a way that the South could assert more political authority over this process. It was a new congressman, Stephen A. Douglas’ idea to take the omnibus bill apart, and introduces each issue as their own bill. His idea took hold, but left resentments and killed the Missouri Compromise. This made room for questions about the development of slavery and contained the keys to disunion the war. Overall the Compromise of 1850 was filled with conflict, and would eventually lead to the downward spiral to the Civil
Dred Scott was a former slave that claimed he was a free man due to his master (deceased) taking him into free territory. The court decided that he was not technically a citizen, therefore he could not sue. This is the court decision that ultimately deemed all slaves as property, and guaranteed they had no rights and a white man didn’t have to respect them, as a free black or a slave. “In the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford(1857), the court ruled that even residence on free soil did not render a slave a free person, for, regardless of their status, black people had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” (Jones 342) The Northerners believe this obliterated the state limits. “Even nonabolitionists had good reason to fear the long-term implications of the ruling, for it suggested that the institution of slavery was about to spill out of the confines of the South and into the rest of the country.” (Jones 342) This case severely changed our nation in the way that Americans thought of blacks free or