History Reflection

Coons, darkies, boys. These are just a few of the incredibly insulting names that you could hear whites calling the black slaves in any of the Southern or Northern states during the 1850Os to the 1860Os. My Grandmother was raised in Missouri in the 1930Os. She has had a lot of experience in the way that whites treated there slaves at that time. She told me that once when she was about thirteen years old here father came home and told here family that one of the neighbors up the street took two of his slaves down to the dike shot both of them in the back of the head and through them it to the river. This was just because he had no need for them any more. He could of sold them, but I guess that he gained some kind of pleasure from shooting Negroes. Quit a disgusting thought of you ask me. Back in the 1800Os Africans were shipped over from Africa and were sold as slaves to the Southern States of New England.

Basically, the Northerners were against slavery and the Southerners were pro-slavery. The compromise of 1850 was supposed to put an end to the slavery controversy. But it did not. After the law was past many Southerners were trying to capture their slaves that had previously disappeared into the Northern states. All of those slaves were in grave danger of recapture. Also, anyone that was caught helping a slave escape would receive a $1000 fine and or six months jail time. Even so thousands of blacks pulled stakes and moved to Canada. Men that tried to reclaim their slaves were often killed for kidnaping in the northern States. Most Northerners were prejudiced against blacks, free or slaves yet they didnOt condone slavery.

A woman named Harriet Beecher Stowe was author of an anti-slavery novel titled OOUncle TomOs CabinOO published in 1852. The book seemed to be a wakeup call to the Northerners about what slavery was really like in the Southern states.

The book was a fictional story about a black slave man named Uncle Tom and the different people he slaved for. In the end of the story he is sold to Simon Legree, who has him lashed to death by Sambo, one of Simons other slavers. The plot of this novel was so hard to believe that it was considered a modern soap opera. Stowe herself had only been subjected to slavery once in her life. Over 300,000 copies of the novel were sold in the first year and it was made into several plays as well.

Ever science the states had herd about New England acquiring California there was much talk about building a railroad from the West to the East coast. The problem was that the Southern states wanted the railroad to go from New Or liens and through Nebraska. The Northerners wanted it to start in Chicago and go through Kansas. At the time there was more of a chance for the railroad to go through Nebraska because of the fact that the governments were already set up. The Northerners didnOt want the railroad to be in the southern states because they were set up as a slave states. Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois devised a scheme. He decided to open the new territories to slavery no that the majority of the Southerners would vote for that area. The catch was that there was no reason to own a slave is this area because of the fact that the farming land was infertile and it had very dry weather. With no cotton farming land there was no real reason to have slaves. This Kansas Nebraska Bill was introduced to the Senate on January 4,1854. It was passed and made the new territories split with Kansas allowing slavery and not allowing it in Nebraska.

The Osted Manifesto was a secret attempt by the south to buy Cuba from Spain in attempt for the south to gain more territory. When the word got out to the north about it, they were furious. The Senators law was repealed.

The Pottawatomie Massacre was started by a man named John Brown. He and seven other men walked into a settlement near Pottawatomie Creek in the dark of night and for no reason murdered five people in a brutal manner. This almost brought Kansas to the verge of Civil War. A small war broke out in this area and it has been known as OOBleeding KansasOO.

These are just some of the things that led to the Civil War from of 1860 to 1864. The Civil War was basically based on the differences between the North and the South about the slave laws. Even today there is still a lot of prejudiced white people on the Eastern sea-board that feel the same way as they did over one hundred years ago.