15-2
The
Crisis Deepens
Ø Turmoil over slavery led to acts of
violence
Ø Violence can make compromise more
difficult
ONE AMERICAN'S STORY
Harriet Beecher Stowe was outraged when she heard about the
part of the Compromise of 1850 that would help slaveholders recapture runaway
slaves. She described her feelings about the law.
A VOICE FROM THE PAST
Since the legislative act of 1850,
when [I] heard . . . Christian and humane people actually recommending the
remanding [returning of] escaped fugitives into slavery, as a duty binding on
good citizens, . . . [I] could only think, These men and Christians cannot know
what slavery is.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
Stowe's anger motivated her to write Uncle Tom's Cabin, a novel that
portrayed slavery as brutal and immoral. In this section, you will learn how
the Compromise of 1850 deepened the division between the North and the South.
The Fugitive Slave Act
The 1850 law to help slaveholders recapture runaway slaves
was called the Fugitive Slave Act. People accused of being fugitives under this
law could be held without an arrest warrant. In addition, they had no right to
a jury trial. Instead, a federal commissioner ruled on each case. The
commissioner received five dollars for releasing the defendant and ten dollars
for turning the defendant over to a slaveholder. Southerners felt that the
Fugitive Slave Act was justified because they considered slaves to be property.
But Northerners resented the Fugitive Slave Act. It required Northerners to
help recapture runaway slaves. It placed fines on people who would not
cooperate and jail terms on people who helped the fugitives escape. In
addition, Southern slave catchers roamed the North, sometimes capturing free
African Americans. The presence of slave catchers throughout the North brought
home the issue of slavery to Northerners. They could no longer ignore the fact
that, by supporting the Fugitive Slave Act, they played an important role in
supporting slavery. They faced a moral choice. Should they obey the law and
support slavery, or should they break the law and oppose slavery?
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Stowe published Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852. It dramatically portrayed the
moral issues of slavery. In fact, a play based on the book increased the
popularity of theater as well as abolitionism. The book's main character was
Uncle Tom, a respected older slave. The plot centers on Tom's life under three owners. Two of the owners were kind, but the
third was cruel. The novel includes dramatic scenes, such as the dangerous
escape of a slave named Eliza and her baby across the
A VOICE FROM THE PAST
Eliza made her desperate retreat across the
river just in the dusk of twilight. The gray mist of evening, rising slowly
from the river, enveloped her as she disappeared up the bank, and the swollen
current and floundering masses of ice presented a hopeless barrier between her
and her pursuer.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's
Cabin
Stowe's book was wildly popular in
the North. But white Southerners believed the book falsely criticized the South and slavery.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
While the Fugitive Slave Act and Uncle Tom's Cabin
heightened the conflicts between the North and the South, the issue of slavery
in the territories brought bloodshed to the West. In 1854, Senator Stephen A.
Douglas of
"Bleeding
Proslavery and antislavery settlers rushed into the
Onto this explosive scene came John Brown, an extreme
abolitionist. To avenge the Sack of Lawrence, Brown and seven other men went to
the cabins of several of his proslavery neighbors and murdered five people.
This attack is known as the Pottawatomie Massacre, after the creek near where
the victims were found. As news of the violence spread, civil war broke out in
Violence in Congress
While violence was spreading in