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

Fugitive Slave Act was amended in order to return the runaway slaves back to their owners. Many northerners opposed this act, seeing it as immoral, and repeatedly went against it and aided fugitive slaves, angering the Southerners. According to Ralph Emerson in document E, “What kind of Legislation is this? What kind of constitution covers it? I supposed the Union can be left to take care of itself… But one thing appears to me, that, as soon as the constitution ordains an immoral law, it ordains disunion. The law is suicidal, and cannot be obeyed. The Union is at an end as soon as an immoral law is enacted. And he who writes a crime into the statute-book digs under the foundations of the capitol to plav there a powder-magazine, and lays a train.” Emerson indicated that the constitution was contradictory as it attempts to unify the nation, it leads to the end of the union through the implementations of immoral laws such as the Fugitive Slave Act.
When the constitution was written with unification of the states as the most important
goal, states’ rights and slavery was not addressed clearly and specifically. The ambiguity of the constitution allowed the states to develop their own interpretation of its meaning. For example in document F, “to the argument, that the words ‘slaves’ and ‘slavery’ are not to be found in the constitution, and therefore that it was never intended to give any protection or countenance to the slave system, it is sufficient to reply, that though no such words are contained in the instrument, other words were used, intelligently and specifically, to meet the necessities of slavery.” Conflicting with the rights of owning property, the South interpreted the vagueness of slavery in the constitution as giving them the right to own slaves. However, the North interpreted that slavery should be void because of the ambiguity.
The opposing interpretations of the constitution by the North and South continued as the
sovereignty of the states and the control implemented by the federal government strengthened the division.

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

divisions.