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Did The Dred Scott's Decision Galvanize Opposition To Slavery Among Northerners

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A House Divided 1) Why did the Dred Scott decision galvanize opposition to slavery among northerners? Dred Scott was a Supreme Court ruling in 1857 that rejected citizenship for African Americans and said that Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery. This ruling upset a lot of northerners because it would allow the practice of slavery to spread into non-sale states. At this time, slavery was a very hot-button issue and northerners weren’t even comfortable with it even in the South. So this ruling, which allowed the practice to spread, was thought to be antithetical to the ideas of freedom and equality that America stood for. 2) What were Helper's, Fitzhugh's, Lincoln's, and Douglas's views on black people? Were they racists or not? Each of these individuals …show more content…

So I’m going to go through each individual and give them their exact few and then determine if these views lead to them being racist. Hinton Rowan Helper was an anti-slavery advocate, but not for the reason that you would think. He doesn’t think slavery is wrong or immoral, but instead just believes that it was economically damaging for poor white people and that it only helped the small elite. He thinks that slavery takes away working opportunities for poor white people since why would a rich white person pay a poor poor white person to do the job that they can get an enslaved black person to do for free, Saying. "The lords of the lash are not only absolute masters of the blacks, who are only nominally free, but they are also the owners and lords of the poor, non-slaveholding whites." If you break this down, he’s just saying that slavery just leads to rich white people being in charge of blacks and whites because they employ the white people. He also believed that slavery kept the South backward compared to the North, thinking that it didn’t help with their evolution. Is Helper a racist? In my opinion, he's not a blatant racist, but at the same time he didn’t condemn slavery for the

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The Dred Scott Decision made the Civil War unavoidable because of the treatment of African Americans regarding their equality and opportunity. Dred Scott was a slave in Virginia who tried to sue for his freedom in court. The case eventually went to the Supreme Court level, where the justices found that, as a slave, Dred Scott was property that had none of the legal rights of that of a white man. The Northerners hated this decision because it meant that slavery could spread into all territories. This inflamed tensions as the Northerners felt that the South was trying to expand slavery into the free states and would be able to do so.

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The stubborn southerners viewed the repeal of the compromise as a huge win and both sides felt the urgency to rapidly establish their voters in the affected states. The Dred Scott Case decision to return the slave to his rightful owners was the final straw for the abolitionists. Now, any African-Americans born free or emancipated were at risk for being taken back into slavery without reason or proof. Ultimately the differences in viewpoint came down to property (therefore money), economy, and social hierarchy.

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Republicans from the North such as Abraham Lincoln were against the spread of slavery, and so Sen. Stephen Douglas made a symbolic move against the North, the territories which would have been unlikely candidates for slave-holding states were stormed by slaveholders from Missouri, and brief fighting broke out in Kansas. The North was struck again with the effect of the Dred Scott v. Stanford case, which ruled that slavery could not be banned in the United States. This was a setback to anti-slavery Northerners, who though fighting to keep slavery out of their states, were told that slavery must be allowed universally. Dred Scott v. Stanford ensured that the Northerners felt their values were being attacked, and began to rise defensively as they began to sense compromise would not work in their

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With the increasingly polarizing debates and discussions surrounding slavery as the Civil War approached, the North and South were at a breaking point. Abraham Lincoln's election into office, the Dred Scott decision, and Bleeding Kansas brought the country at odds with itself and many people believed that this problem could only be solved through violence and division. When Abraham Lincoln was elected to be the President of the United States, the South was aggravated and not willing to have a president that did not share their opinions on slavery. Because Lincoln was so outspoken against the institution of slavery, the South felt directly attacked. Their way of life since slavery was introduced was threatened.

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This created further division within the United States as more new territories chose sides. The Supreme Court ruling in Dredd Scott v. Sanford in 1857 declared that African Americans were not citizens and therefore Congress could not prohibit the expansion of slavery into the territories. That ruling emboldened slave owners, seeing it as validation of their rights, while it enraged

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proponent Charles Sumner and South Carolina's Senator Preston Brooks The growth in leaps and bounds of the Abolitionist Movement contributed to secession. The North was highly polarized against slavery prompting sympathy for abolitionists and against slaveholders. The Dred Scott's Case and the passage of the fugitive slave act put pressure on the South. The act was to provide slave owners with weapons to capture slaves who had escaped to the north.

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Many politicians in the North were simply indifferent to slavery, and were more focused on keeping a balance between slave and non slave states so as not to tip the scales. However, pressure began to mount for politicians to take an aggressive stance on slavery, especially after the publishing of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which helped to humanize slaves and fuel abolitionist movements. The notion of slavery being immoral became more and more widespread, and people looked to politicians to prevent it slavery from expanding. On the other hand, the Dred Scott vs. Sanford decision was also made during this time period by the supreme court, encouraging pro slavers in their belief that slavery should not be stopped in its expansion. These two events did nothing but make the two sides more resolute in their differing beliefs, which forced all politicians to either be strongly pro or against slavery.

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It also ruled that the federal government didn 't have the power to regulate slavery. After the Dred Scott vs Sandford case, outrage flourished in anti-slavery northerners and an uproar swept through the south. Anti-slavery abolitionists were outraged because the Supreme Court ruled that all African Americans may not become citizens. The turmoil in the south was caused by the somewhat pro-slavery ruling in the Dred Scott vs Sandford decision. According to Shmoop, the popularity for the anti-slavery Republican party surged.

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With a majority of abolitionists from the North the Northern states view slavery as an immoral action. In contrast the majority of pro-slavery persons were from the South and didn’t see anything wrong with slavery. The Northern outlook upon slavery can be seen in Document 4 when Frederick Douglass, a former slave himself, says. “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim”.

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The state attracted citizens from both the North and the South, causing the disagreements of the opposing sides to become more evident. By the year 1855, issues emerged when proslavery and antislavery settlers were competing in order to outnumber one another in votes. Two years later, divisions between the North and South grew even stronger when the Supreme Court took on the case of Dred Scott. Scott, who was an African American slave, sued for his freedom after his masters had traveled with him to a free state. The Court, ruled by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, came to the conclusion that Scott was not a free man because he was property and it would be unconstitutional to take the property of a citizen.

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This decision angered both northerners and southerners. The North was upset due to the decision, which declared that black Americans didn’t count as citizens, which made no effort in the abolition of slavery. The South’s issue was that the majority of their state population was African American, and would give them less representatives if they did not count as citizens, or people in general. This affected the election of Abraham Lincoln, which led to the South’s succession and the start of the

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Another example of growing sectional divisions over the issue of slavery spreading is the Dred Scott Decision of 1857 (Doc 9). In this court case, the U.S. supreme court ruled that slaves have no rights, and that slavery was free to expand into the territories. This decision pleased southern defenders of slavery, and angered northern abolitionists, further dividing the

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While the denial of Scotts case put many southerners at ease, people in the North believed that something had to be done about slave matters in America. This led to more tensions between the North and South in regards to their political

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I chose a photograph to rhetorically analyze for this discussion. I saw this photograph on one of my friend's Instagram feed and I had a lot of thoughts about it, so I thought it would be perfect to analyze. My initial reaction to this photograph is thinking how creative, yet strange the imagination of the creator is. Of course, this photograph is lift to interpretation, but I perceived the purpose of the photograph to be of amusement because it makes me laugh and smile every time I see it. Even if you personally do not like cats, I am sure that this photograph will make you smile.

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People who defended slavery believed that slavery was a good thing and that it wasn't that bad for slaves. Northerners thought that slavery was a good thing and that is wasn't harmful. Douglass´s position is that slavery was a horrible thing and that it was harmful. One piece of evidence is in excerpt 3 paragraph 4 it says ¨Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me.

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