Contributing Factors to the Civil War after the Compromise of 1850.
The Compromise of 1850 had kept peace between the North and the South for a few years. The agreement between the Northern states and the Southern states over the compromise succeeded in postponing immediate and outright hostilities between the North and the South but it contributed to the problems that would arise in the next few years before the Civil war. Some reasons for more conflict , were that the compromise did little to address key issues of dispute that people thought were important. It even reinforced the structural imbalance that divided the United States. For instance, the South felt betrayed because the government had given the North larger advantages and concessions in the Compromise of 1850. It further created the divide between the North and the South by categorizing many states with the title "slave" and "free". When people were not satisfied with how the Compromise of 1850 dealt with the issue of slavery many uprisings and rebellions came about such as the "Bleeding Kansas" rebellion and others due to the fugitive slave act. Some states went even further than just normal protest and actually seceded from the union and formed the Confederate States of America.
The tensions caused by the Compromise of 1850 caused many Northerners to encourage the rebellion of slaves as a way of revenge toward the South. Perhaps the most notorious of these slave rebellions was the Christiana Resistance, on September 11, 1851. This slave revolt was led by William Parker, an escaped slave living in the North. The goal of the slave rebellion was to bring the countries attention to the North's hatred for the reinforced Fugitive Slave Act. In this instance, a man named Edward Gorsuch came with a warrant to recover his slaves. Gorsuch's actions resulted in a situation that had to be stabilized by U.S. Marines. This is just one example of the many ways the Compromise of 1850 increased tensions between the North and the South, and ultimately reinstated the Civil War. Another example of how the Compromise of 1850 increased the violence of the Civil War is that it was a major encouragement for the South to leave the Union, because the North clearly had more advantages as a result of it. Once the South succeeded from the Union, the first battle of the Civil War was fought. This battle, the Battle of Fort Sumter, can be directly linked to the Compromise of 1850 and the tensions caused from it by the unfair advantages given to the North.
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“What a change now greets us! The Government is aroused, the dead North is alive, and its divided people united…The cry now is for war, vigorous war, war to the bitter end, and war till the traitors are effectually and permanently put down.”
~ Frederick Douglass, May 1861, after Battle of Fort Sumter
~ Frederick Douglass, May 1861, after Battle of Fort Sumter