Primary Sources
As you read each source, practice these four skills:
This law required all Americans — including those in free states — to help capture and return escaped enslaved people. Anyone who helped a freedom-seeker could be fined $1,000 (about $40,000 today) and jailed. It made the North complicit in slavery.
When a person held to service or labor in any State… shall escape into another State… the person to whom such service or labor may be due… may pursue and reclaim such fugitive person… In no trial or hearing under this act shall the testimony of such alleged fugitive be admitted in evidence… Any person who shall knowingly and willingly obstruct, hinder, or prevent such claimant… shall, for either of said offences, be subject to a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, and imprisonment not exceeding six months.
How does this law connect to the Virginia Slave Codes from Chapter 4? Is the reach of slavery expanding or contracting?
"Fugitive Slave Act." 18 Sept. 1850. The Avalon Project, Yale Law School.
Lincoln delivered this speech when accepting the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Illinois. He was running against Stephen Douglas. The speech's central metaphor — taken from the Bible — predicted that the country could not survive half slave and half free.
A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.
How does Lincoln's warning compare to the growing tensions described in the textbook — from Bleeding Kansas to the Dred Scott decision?
Lincoln, Abraham. "'A House Divided' Speech." 16 June 1858. Abraham Lincoln Online.
Dred Scott, an enslaved man, sued for his freedom because his enslaver had taken him to free territory. The Supreme Court ruled against him. Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote that Black people "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." This decision enraged the North and brought the country closer to war.
[Black people] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.
The Declaration of Independence says "all men are created equal." How does this ruling contradict that ideal? Or does Taney think it doesn't apply?
Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857). Cornell Law Institute.
John Brown led a raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, hoping to start a slave rebellion. He was captured, tried, and sentenced to death. This is his final statement to the court.
I believe that to have interfered as I have done — as I have always freely admitted I have done — in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments — I submit; so let it be done!
Some Americans called Brown a hero; others called him a terrorist. What's the difference — and who gets to decide?
Brown, John. "Last Speech to the Court." 2 Nov. 1859. The Avalon Project, Yale Law School.