William_T._Bianco,_David_T._Canon]_American_Polit

152152 Chapter 5 | Civil Rights

$3,978; in the North, it was $2,040. The South had only 30 percent of the nation’s free

population, but it had 60 percent of the wealthiest men.^6

Abolitionists worked to rid the nation of slavery as its importance to the South

grew, setting the nation on a collision course that would not be resolved until the Civil

War. Despite the work of some early abolitionists, the Founders largely ducked the

issue (see Chapter 2), and subsequent legislatures and courts did not come any closer

to resolving the impasse between the North and South over slavery. The Missouri

Compromise of 1820, which limited the expansion of slavery and kept the overall

balance between slave states and free states, eased tensions for a while, but the issue

persisted. By the 1830s, the abolitionist movement gained considerable strength. Slave

owners became increasingly frustrated with the success of the Underground Railroad,

which helped some slaves escape to freedom in the North. In 1850, the debate over

admitting California as a free state or a slave state (or making it half-free and half-slave)

threatened to split the nation once again. As part of the Compromise of 1850, southern

states agreed to admit California as a free state, but only if Congress passed the

Fugitive Slave Act, which required northern states to treat escaped slaves as property

and return them to their owners. The Compromise also overturned the Missouri

Compromise and allowed each new state to decide for itself whether to be a slave state

or a free state.^7

All possibility of further compromise on the issue ended with the misguided Dred

Scott v. Sandford decision in 1857. The Supreme Court ruled that states could not be

prevented from allowing slavery. It also held that slaves were property rather than

citizens and, as such, had no legal rights. But, in 1860, believing that slavery was in

jeopardy after Abraham Lincoln won the presidency, the southern states seceded from

the Union and formed the Confederacy.

The outcome of the Civil War restored national unity and ended slavery, but the

price was very high. About 528,000 Americans died in the war, with an astonishingly

high casualty rate (25 percent).^8 After the war, Republicans moved quickly to ensure

that the changes accomplished by the war could not easily be undone: they promptly

adopted the Civil War amendments to the Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment

banned slavery, the Fourteenth guaranteed that states could not deny newly freed

slaves the equal protection of the laws and provided citizenship to anyone born in the

Slavery was part of the American

economy from the 1600s until it

was abolished by the Thirteenth

Amendment in 1865. The system of

slavery in the South created a highly

unequal society in which African

Americans were denied virtually

all rights. Abolitionists worked to

undermine and abolish slavery. Harriet

Tubman was instrumental in the

success of the Underground Railroad,

which brought countless slaves to

freedom.

A house divided against itself

cannot stand. I believe this

government cannot endure

permanently half-slave and

half-free.

— President Abraham Lincoln

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