Inevitable Decision?

The Constitution was framed in 1787 and ratified by the "several states" as it is explained in document H. It says nothing directly about "slaves" or "slavery" in the United States. According to document E, it uses a clever array of words "to meet the necessities of slavery" without actually referring to it as "slavery." In this way, it allows for slavery even though many of those leading the country are against it. This was used to compromise with the South allowing them the right to own slaves. The problems began when more territories and states began to join into the Union. Document A shows how the states are spread among slave and free. The government, which was primarily run by antislavery supporters, was intent upon making sure that the slave states did not become more numerous than the free states. If this happened than the free states could be outvoted on the issue of slavery in the whole country. Therefore, as states and territories were added to the Union, the government made sure to do everything that they could to keep the ratio of slave to free states in the free states favor.

As the advertisement in document C cautions, many of the blacks captured after the fugitive slave act were not slaves at all. They may have been slaves or simply freed blacks whom the slave catchers found. The slave catchers did not care whom they were catching as long as they were paid for it. This created even more tension between slave owners and anyone who was either against slavery or simply indifferent as long as it didn't affect them. The slave owners saw nothing wrong with the kidnapping of blacks because it was their property that they believed was being stolen from them when their slaves ran away, and, as Ralph Waldo Emerson states in document D, those antislavery supporters believed that "a man's right to liberty is as unalienable as his right to life." The southern slave owners began to resent the north because the north would refuse to return runaway slaves to their owners.

A few provisions were made in the Constitution in an attempt to keep the south at bay about the slavery issue. In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was passed to allow for the southern slave owner to redeem their slave who had run away. This caused a lot of tension because most people in the north did not believe in slavery at all, or at least did not want to be involved in it in any way. As a result, in Ohio, Personal Liberty Laws, which encouraged people to break the law, were passed to contradict the Fugitive Slave Act. In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was introduced by Stephan Douglas. The bill was reworked to divide the land into two different territories. The idea of popular sovereignty was applied to determine whether Kansas or Nebraska would be either slave or free states.

In response to the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, the Republican Party was formed as an antislavery party emerging from the old Free-soil party.