James Buchanan and Stephen Douglas were two politicians that were considered to be a part of the “Blundering Generation” of politicians that made mistakes and were unwilling to compromise, therefore leading to the Civil War. According to Henretta (2011), Buchanan was a proslavery advocate who refused to use his office to try and settle a compromise, encouraged the judges in the Dred Scott case to side with southern judges to condemn the runaway slave, and recommended that Kansas enter the United States as a slave state under the Lecompton legislature. Buchanan’s choices and his pursuit of a “proslavery agenda” caused his party and the nation to widen even further (Henretta, 2011, p. 422). Douglas pushed for popular sovereignty, especially in …show more content…
These attempts at compromise and keeping the Union together, while working for a time being, were not properly enforced, and they always seemed to anger one side.
The Missouri Compromise was one of the first controversial compromises that encountered the issue of expanding slavery. While Henry Clay created the majority of the two-part resolution, which stated that Missouri would enter the U.S. as a slave state while Maine would enter as a free state and that “slavery was to be excluded from all new states in the Louisiana Purchase north of the southern boundary of Missouri” (U.S. History, 2008-2014), many people viewed the comprise as being extremely flawed. While the Compromise
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In the case, the Supreme Court ruled that “all people of African ancestry could never become citizens of the United States and therefore could not sue in federal court,” according to Africans in America. Buchanan also encouraged some federal judges to agree with southern judges in the case, convinced that a proslavery decision and final ruling would end fighting in Kansas and other violence that has erupted around the issue of slavery. Because of Buchanan’s support and interference in the case, the nation became even more