CAMBRIDGE AS HISTORY: HISTORY OF THE USA. THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 AND ITS BREAKDOWN. Key issues, the compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act 1854, formation of the Republican Party.

1. CAMBRIDGEAS
HISTORYREVISION
HISTORYOFTHEUSA
1.2 THECOMPROMISEOF1850
ANDITSBREAKDOWN

2. KEY ISSUES
• Slave trade in Washington, DC: abolitionists wanted to end slave
trade; South feared this would be precedent for abolishing slave trade
between states.
• Fugitive Slave Act 1793: gave slave owners the right to get fugitive
slaves back; many Northern states were breaking this law.

3. FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT 1793
The Fugitive Slave Acts were a pair of federal laws that allowed for the
capture and return of runaway slaves within the territory of the US.
Enacted by Congress in 1793, the first Fugitive Slave Act authorized local
governments to seize and return escaped slaves to their owners and
imposed penalties on anyone who aided in their flight.
Widespread resistance to the 1793 law later led to the passage of the Fugitive
Slave Act of 1850, which added further provisions regarding runaways and
levied even harsher punishments for interfering in their capture.
The Fugitive Slave Acts were among the most controversial laws of the early
19th century, and many Northern states passed special legislation in an
attempt to circumvent them. Both laws were formally repealed by an act of
Congress in 1864.

4. THE COMPROMISE OF 1850
• Slave Trade: abolished in Washington, DC.
• New Fugitive Slave Act: designed to prevent people interfering with
slave owners’ rights to get back their slaves.
• New states: California joined USA as a free state, even though it was
below the 1830 Missouri Compromise line; New Mexico and Utah
joined without yet deciding on slavery.
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin 1852: anti-slavery novel.

5. THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT 1854
• Stephen Douglas: wanted to decide the status of Kansas and Nebraska to
allow for settlement and railways; Douglas persuaded President Pierce to
allow local people to decide whether they were to be free or slave states.
• Implications: effectively repealed Missouri Compromise; Supported by
South, opposed by North.
• ‘Bleeding Kansas’: people moved there to shape the election results;
election was pro-slavery; abolitionists established their own local
government – led to mini civil war in Kansas.

6. FORMATION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
• Groups that joined: Northern Whigs, Northern Democrats, Free Soil
Party.
• 1856 presidential election: Frémont (Republican) v. Buchanan
(Democrat); Buchanan won; led to talk of South’s secession from USA.

7. THE FOUNDING MEETING
In Wisconsin, former members of the Whig Party meet to establish a new
party to oppose the spread of slavery into the western territories.
The Whig Party was formed in 1834 to oppose the “tyranny” of President
Andrew Jackson.
With the successful introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854, an
act that dissolved the terms of the Missouri Compromise and allowed
slave or free status to be decided in the territories by popular
sovereignty, the Whigs disintegrated.
By February 1854, anti-slavery Whigs had begun meeting in the states to
discuss the formation of a new party.
One such meeting, in Wisconsin on March 20, 1854, is generally
remembered as the founding meeting of the Republican Party.

8. BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR
In November 1860, Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected president
over a divided Democratic Party, and six weeks later South Carolina
formally seceded from the Union. Within six more weeks, five other
Southern states had followed South Carolina’s lead, and in April 1861 the
Civil War began.
The Civil War firmly identified the Republican Party as the party of the
victorious North. By 1876, the Republican Party had lost control of the
South, but it continued to dominate the presidency until the election of
Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933.