Slavery: The Elephant in the Room

We know that the debate over slavery was the “elephant in the room” for American politics in the early 19th century because the opinions on it were so divided, and the topic itself was extremely controversial. From 1850 to 1859, violent events and questionable government decisions brought up strong opposing sides on the topic of slavery. In class, we created a timeline with events that prove that the debate over slavery was a difficult topic to discuss in the early 19th century.

One example of violence that resulted from the lack of debate on the topic of slavery was the Kansas Nebraska Act of 1954. The Kansas Nebraska Act, created by Stephen Douglas, created a new transcontinental railroad from Chicago to new territory in the west. The act was going to make Chicago a center of commerce and trade, but to make it happen, Douglas had to compromise with the south. He proposed to violate the Missouri Compromise,which states that there were to be no slave states above the Missouri’s southern border, and create new territories in the west, Kansas and Nebraska, that would be ruled by popular sovereignty. This resulted in thousands of pro slavery activists and abolitionists to flock to the new territory in an attempt to influence their status as states. Violent disputes over land and slave laws broke out across the land, eventually naming this time Bleeding Kansas.

Just as Bleeding Kansas was the result of an incompetent compromise, John Brown’s attack on Harper’s Ferry was the result of the incompetent debate of slavery in the South. John Brown was upset that the anti-slavery cause was getting nowhere, and decided to take matters into his own hands. He planned to wage war on Virginia with weapons he would steal from the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry. Brown and 21 other men, black and white, violently raided the arsenal. Brown was eventually captured, tried, and hanged, in Virginia for his crime.

Obviously slavery was a topic that people in the early 19th century did not want to discuss at length due to the strong opinions on both sides. Discussions and compromises, no matter how beneficial for either side, seemed to commonly end in violence. People were injured and killed whether they supported slavery or not. Much of these instances, specifically Bleeding Kansas and Harper’s Ferry, were the result of inadequate debates that didn’t solve problems thoroughly enough. But, the result of these acts was even less discussion of slavery, out of fear for more violence and uprisings.