The Elephant in the Room, Slavery Early 19th Century

Hello readers,

In class these past few weeks we have learned more about slavery in the US.  The essential question was how to do we know that the debate over slavery was the elephant in the room for American politics in the early 19th century. Although they did somewhat address slavery in politics they did not discuss it at the extent it should have been discussed at. They created laws around actually discussing this issue and trying to make the US a country known for slavery or not. To learn about the government acts in the early 19th century about slavery we read and did research on many big events. We then created a timeline with each event that we learned about on it. The antislavery events went above the line while the proslavery events went below it.

The US government at the time was trying to work around discussing slavery fully. The government created acts such as the Nebraska-Kansas Act that said that when they were populated more they would decide if it was a slave state or not. This made people from the north (antislavery) and people from the south (proslavery) all flock there to have the state go in their favor.

Kansas was in an all out war within the state. People who were proslavery and people who were just against any other ethnicity other than whites had created two governments in the state and were fighting against each other. This was caused by them both flocking their trying to make Kansas a slave state or not. The real US government was not addressing this terrible crime.

Senator Charles Sumner made a speech about “The Crime Against Kansas” discussing the cruel acts that had happened in Kansas. Sumner discussed Senator Andrew Butler in the speech implying that he knew the violence was going to happen. Sumner was antislavery and thought that all Butler wanted was to spread slavery so he supported the Act so slavery would grow. Butler then got so upset that he hit Sumner with his cane causing Sumner to be badly injured.

During all of the concern about making the US a slavery country or not there was an enslaved black man, Dred Scott. His owner had died and he wanted freedom. Dred Scott had traveled with his owner everywhere and lived in free slave states. Mr. Scott had filed a lawsuit saying that he is a free man now because his owner died and he had lived in free states. This lawsuit was brought up to the Supreme Court which ruled 7 to 2 against Dred Scott. The lawsuit technically at the time should never had been brought to court  because slaves were not citizens which means they were not allowed to sue. The lawsuit had caused the Missouri Compromise to be called unconstitutional and all territories, whether north of the line or not, were now open to slavery.

The government avoided discussing slavery as a whole throughout a lot of the 19th century. Little things were discussed such as what state would be a slave state or not but final decisions were never made. The government was treating slavery like the “elephant in the room”.

Julianna O.