Slavery Issue HOO!

The Compromise of 1850 was signed by Millard Fillmore after Zachary Taylor died, and Clay, Webster, and Douglas orated on behalf of the compromise for the North, but the South hated it; they finally accepted it after much debate. Although the North got the better deal in the Compromise of 1850, and The District of Columbia could not have slave trade, slavery was still legal. Nonetheless, it ameliorated the slavery issue; and as an effect of the Compromise of 1850, a new Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was drastic, and it stated that (1) fleeing slaves couldn’t testify on their own behalf, (2) the federal commissioner who handled the case got $5 if the slave was free and $10 if not, and (3) people who were ordered to help catch slaves had to do so, even if they didn’t want to.

Senator Stephen Douglas proposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which would let slavery in Kansas and Nebraska be decided upon by popular sovereignty. The problem was that the Missouri Compromise had banned this, so the act would have to repeal it. Southerners had not thought of Kansas as a possible slave state, and thus backed the bill, but Northerners rallied against it. Nevertheless, Douglass rammed the bill through Congress, and it was passed. The Kansas-Nebraska Act directly wrecked the Compromise of 1820 and indirectly wrecked the Compromise of 1850. Northerners no longer enforced the Fugitive Slave Law at all, and Southerners were still angry, aggravating the slavery issue.