Compromise Of 1820 Essay

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 prohibited the expansion of slavery any further west than Missouri and north of the 36° 30´ latitude line. However, the outcome of the Mexican-American War brought a considerable amount of land in the southwest under US control. The question over the expansion of slavery once more became a heated national issue. A key question was whether or not Southerners who settled in the new territories were allowed to bring their slaves with them. The Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 established popular sovereignty in western territories, meaning settlers were to vote over the allowance of slavery, effectively repealing the Compromise of 1820. This resulted in Bleeding Kansas, as armed northerners

Escaped slaves helped exposed the brutality of these laws. Anthony Burns escaped from a plantation in Virginia and freed himself. After stowing away on a ship and eventually making it to Boston, he found work in a clothing store. However, he sent a letter to his enslaved still enslaved brother and it was intercepted by his former owner. He embarked on capturing Burns, believing he was entitled to his property. Subsequently, Burns was arrested and placed in chains by a Deputy US Marshall in Boston. People in Boston reacted strongly to this. There was outrage and public meetings were held in support of Burns; abolitionist flyers to meetings were placed throughout the city reading: “To secure justice for a man claimed as a slave by a Virginia kidnapper.” They considered Burns a free man and his owner a criminal. They were large-scale demonstrations and protests against the Fugitive Slave laws. Several violent attempts were made by white and black abolitionists to break him out of the county

He goes through years of legal battles and his case was appealed all the way to the US Supreme Court. The court decided that every other black American, whether slave or free, could not sue in federal court. Infamously, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney penned, "[Blacks] had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.” Although, he lived in a place where slavery was abolished, he was still a slave. Pivotally, the court also ruled Congress was prohibited from passing any laws preventing slave owners from bringing their slaves out west. The ruling effectively left northerners powerless. They believed deeply in the virtue of free labor, as social mobility was possible. Through hard work, any man could improve his conditions — the essence of the American dream. People in the North did not believe free white labor could compete with the slave labor of white Southerners. The Scott Decision further outrages the