Slave States Vs Free States Dbq Essay

When created in 1787, our Founding Fathers intended the constitution to maintain the union between the states under the federal government. However, it caused sectional divide and tension among the states because of its ambiguous diction and the polarizing views on it between the North and South. This ultimately led to the failure of the union and the Civil War in 1861.

After gaining new territories from Mexico after the Mexican American war, congress released the Compromise of 1850 to address the issue of whether the new states should be slave states or free states. As shown in the map in document A, California was declared a free state to keep a balance of free and slave states to keep the unity between the North and South. The Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854 was also passed to allow the states of Kansas and Nebraska to decide whether they wanted to prohibit slavery or not without disrupting the balance of free and slave states. The number of fugitive slaves began to increase, so the

The South believed that it was their right to sustain slavery whether or not they please to as the government was built on the sovereignty of states. They believed that their rights were and the idea of popular sovereignty were being violated because of the supremacy of the constitution applied by the North. In document I, Stephen Douglas states, “This government was made upon the great basis of the sovereignty of the states, the eight of each state to regulate its own domestic institutions to suit itself; and that right was conferred with the understanding and expectation that, inasmuch as each locality had separate interests, each locality must have different and distinct local and domestic institutions, corresponding to its wants and interests.” According to Douglas, the South believed the constitution benefited only the north and this created tensions and sectional