After all
of the hustle and bustle mentioned in the previous blog entry, things ended up
going back to the beginning, defeating the purpose of all of the compromises in
the first place. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was introduced in 1854. It originally
was introduced to organize the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, but
basically repealed the Compromise of 1820 in the end. The Compromise of 1820
was having “slave state, free state, slave state, free state…” and so on and so
on. This meant back to square one. This also meant that no one could agree.
Think of it this way- it’s like a classroom with all 30 students yelling to try
to get an idea across. Chaos right?
Another thing that caused
quite the commotion was Dred Scott. He was a slave that sued for his freedom in
the 1850s. The final ruling (after numerous court cases) in 1857 was that Dred,
along with all other slaves in the United States, could never become citizens
of the U.S. The even more astounding thing was that not only could slaves not
become citizens, but also that any African American could not become free, even
if they were already free.
*Dred Scott*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2932.html
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