Americans Sought to Resolve Their Polictical Disputes

In the early 19th century, the United States was facing political issues between the Northern and Southern states. The United States had attempted to unite both Northern and Southern states with many compromises but there seemed to be no way to resolve the political issues between the Northern and Southern states of America due to economical differences, slave conflict, and compromises.

During this time the north and south were split in an economical sense: Northern states were more industrialized while the Southern states were agrarian, slave based. The South had strong displeasure towards those in the North because the Southerners had felt as though they did all of their own work on their own plantations, as shown in Muscogee, Georgia, Herald, quoted in the New York Tribune (doc. F). There had been a balance between slave and Free states up until the year 1846. Texas had previously asked for an Annexation but both Presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren refused to the act because it would upset the balance between free and slave states; this was a part of the Missouri Compromise that allowed slavery at 36 degrees 30' North latitude. However, in 1844, Texas was annexed and Oregon was brought into the Union at 54 degrees 40' North latitude, this would aid the Northern demands for expansion without worries of Southern Democrats threatening the party unity.

One major issue that divided the North and the South was the conflict on slavery expansion. The northern states were opposed to the expansion of slavery and the South was angered by this because the majority of southern land owners had plantations which lead to a more agrarian based society. Although the Missouri Compromise did divide the northern and southern states, it was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska act in 1854 but the compromise was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court three years following in Dred Scott vs. Sanford. Many abolitionists in the North felt that Congress should not interfere with any slave state but they wanted domestic slave trade to be suppressed and abolition to the states that Congress had jurisdiction in, as shown in the "Declaration of the National Anti-Slavery Convention" in 1834 (doc. B). This conflict really divided the states but the Gag Rule of 1836, quoted in Resolution of the Pickney Committee (doc. C), stated that anything relating to the subject of slavery or the abolition of slavery would be put on "the table", meaning that it would be left there without any further action. Slavery was something that was not only a political issue, but a social and economical issue as well. Abraham Lincoln expressed this in his Speech at Alton on October 15, 1858 (doc. G) because he believed that slavery did, in fact, go beyond politics--Abraham Lincoln being elected as president in 1860 was another issue in itself because the majority of southern states were Democratic while the Northern states were Republican, as shown in the Presidential Election map of 1860 (doc. H). Abraham Lincoln was republican and he was