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Civil War
As Civil War loomed, two significant pieces of legislation helped spark the first shots at Fort Sumter: the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Compromise of 1850, which included the nation's second federal Fugitive Slave Law. Both the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Fugitive Slave Law dealt with what was becoming one of the most contentious political issues in the United States: slavery. The Kansas-Nebraska Act opened new American territories to the possibility of slavery. A direct repeal of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Kansas-Nebraska Act proposed that territories should operate under the provision of popular sovereignty. Settlers, according to the Act, should be able to decide for themselves whether their territory should be free or slaveholding according to their needs. The former Missouri Compromise had mandated that all new territories be admitted to the union only as free states.
Southerners opposed the Missouri Compromise vehemently, not only because of their vocal support of the institution of slavery but more so because of what the Missouri Compromise meant for the political balance of power in Washington. Each new state admitted to the union meant two additional senatorial seats. If those seats were held by politicians from free states, the pro-slavery senators would gradually be silenced. Pro-slavery legislation would be impossible to pass in a senate dominated by anti-slavery politicians.
Thus, Westward expansion exacerbated the division between north and south. As pro-slavery Southerners felt increasingly threatened by their abolitionist Yankee counterparts, their representatives in Congress helped embed a second Fugitive Slave Law into the Compromise of 1850. Humiliated by the Underground Railroad and other attempts to subvert the first Fugitive Slave Law, pro-slavery politicians tightened the noose on runaway slaves and Americans who aided them. Therefore, Southerners directly used the Fugitive Slave Law as political leverage, as a means to regain some of their dwindling power in the federal government. The Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Fugitive Slave Law exposed the deep rift that had already developed between North and South and effectively presaged the Civil War.
References
Fugitive Slave Laws." Infoplease. 2007. Retrieved June 27, 2007 at http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0819828.html
The Kansas Nebraska Act." The History Place. 1996. Retrieved June 27, 2007 at http://www.historyplace.com/lincoln/kansas.htm
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