9781422285947

The Civil War

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free—in order to maintain the balance of power in the U.S. Senate, the Missouri Compromise was a guiding principle of national politics for more than 30 years. The Compromise of 1850 In 1850, California applied for entry to the Union as a free state. Months of debate and contention followed. In the fall of 1850, Congress approved a series of bills that collectively became known as the Compromise of 1850. Under its provisions, California did enter as a free state, and the Territories of Utah and NewMexico were created. At the same time, Con- gress enacted a new Fugitive Slave Law. This law required sheriffs and constables in Northern states to help Southerners capture escaped slaves and return them to the plantations. Southern efforts to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law led to anger and bitterness between slave states and nonslave states. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin , published in 1852, opened the eyes of many Northerners to the horrors of slavery. Southerners, meanwhile, felt increasingly under attack from their Northern compatriots. In 1859, a Northern abolitionist by the name of John Brown, seized the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown wanted to incite a slave rebellion. He even had 2,500 wooden pikes manufactured, which he intended to distribute among the slaves. Brown failed, however, and was captured, tried, and sentenced to death. Seldom has a failed attempt been so successful in the long run. Brown went to his death, in December 1859, without a word of complaint or anger. His noble conduct in the days before his execution persuaded thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of Northerners that he was in the right. An equal number of Southerners were convinced that the North had no sympathy for their way of life, and that if Brown had freed the slaves, those slaves would have murdered the slaveowners in their sleep.