In the late nineteenth century, the North and the South were sharply divided in terms of lifestyle, economical strengths and weaknesses, morals, and political viewpoints. There were many issues that were heatedly debated at the time; slavery, education, industrial expansion, and the rights of freed African Americans. The economy varied hugely depending on the region. In the North, factories fed the economy, and it was full of booming cities. The South however was dependent on "King Cotton," a crop which was almost entirely dependent on slave labor. Because of the two contrasting economies and lifestyles, abolition was a hot mess to debate. While many Southerners agreed that the notion of slavery was a wrong one, they were unwilling to give up the empire they had built on the backs of their slaves. This meant that congress had its hands full trying to appease the two sides- the one, …show more content…
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