Compare And Contrast The Compromises Between 1820 And 1860

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In America during the early and mid 1800’s, many compromises were made about slavery in attempts to calm relations between Northern and Southern states. However, the effects of many of those compromises revealed their true nature of simply leaning on one side of the issue or the other. One such instance of this was the Missouri Compromise of 1820 in which Missouri was allowed to be a slave state only with the admittance of Maine as a free state as well as permanently prohibiting slavery in the remaining Luisiana Purchase north of the 36°30' parallel. Another such contract was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 which recognized Kansas and Nebraska as official United States territories and allowed both to decide by popular sovereignty whether …show more content…

The reality was that because of regional differences that formed between them no true solution existed. The North wanted to limit the spread of slavery and perhaps one day eliminate it while the South refused to accept anything that threatened the expansion of slavery or the institution itself. When the Republican Party rose to power and elected Abraham Lincoln as their candidate, he knew that this issue would tear America apart as evidenced by his speech, “A House Divided Could Not Stand” and his inaugural address. Lincoln had said, “One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute.” He personally believed that blacks had the rights granted to them by the constitution which included life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in which the South was clearly not in favor of by promoting slavery. In the North all of these events were viewed as part of the greater slave conspiracy in which they believed that the South only wanted to deny them their own constitutional rights by supporting slavery. The South interpreted the North’s reaction to this as proof that they were the ones seeking to rob them of their security and place within the Union. Eventually, the point of no return was reached on February of 1861 when seven of the slaveholding states seceded from the Union to form the Confederate States of America which passed its own constitution on March 11 of that same year. When this happened, war had become enviable and the fate of democracy would hang on the balance of this Civil