In
the 1840s, as a consequence of westward expansion, slavery
moved to the center of American politics. Congress had already
enacted the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which barred slavery
from most of the land acquired in the Louisiana Purchase.
Now, increasing numbers of Northerners demanded that the vast
territory gained from the Mexican War (1846-48) should be
reserved as "free soil." But slavery, the South insisted,
needed virgin land to thrive.
The
popular appeal of the free soil position in the North exceeded
anything the abolitionists had proposed. Were slave plantations
to occupy the West, northern migration - and with it hopes
for a better life - would be blocked. Free soil also appealed
to widespread Northern racism, for association with African-Americans,
free or slave, was thought to degrade white labor. After several
years of bitter debate, political leaders arrived at a settlement.
In the Compromise of 1850, Congress admitted California as
a free state, enacted a stringent new fugitive slave law,
and left slavery's status in the remaining territories acquired
from Mexico to the discretion of the inhabitants.
For
a time, the compromise seemed to calm sectional passions.
But in 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska Act, sponsored by Illinois
Senator Stephen A. Douglas, repealed the Missouri Compromise
and opened a large portion of the nation's heartland to the
possible expansion of slavery. The law aroused a furor in
the North. In its wake, the Whig party collapsed and the Republican
Party emerged, dedicated to prohibiting the expansion of slavery.
A sectional line had been drawn across the nation's politics.
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