Founding Documents Essay

Essay by breannapenaflorHigh School, 11th gradeB+, April 2014

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Breanna Penaflor

AP U.S. History P1

Ms.Lee

12 January 2014

In the nineteenth century, the North and the South were of opposite lifestyles as well as economy. The North was undergoing social and economic changes due to industrialization, known as the Antebellum period. Yet the South still clung to their agricultural based economy of king cotton and the labor of slaves, thus it essentially remained the same. Due to this, Congress was continuously addressing controversial matters and providing solutions that could not satisfy the North or the South. These attempts for compromise, that fell short, were those of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Great Compromise of 1850. Others were failed compromises that led to the tariff and nullification controversy, anti-slavery debates in Congress, or the effects of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Whether the opposition to a proposed compromise was on-sided, or dissatisfied by both, there was always an unstable ground that could never been met halfway by either side, and in some cases they would defy passed laws, where compromise was no longer an option, and eventually led to the secession of the southern states.

As the political battle of the 1850s was issued toward the slavery expansion, Abraham Lincoln addressed the political efforts in his speech at Alton, Illinois, October 15, 1858 asking if "the difficulty in regarding the institution of slavery is the mere ambition of office seekers" (Document G), and does slavery not affect the people in our aspects of life of religion, politics, literature, and morals (Document G). Sectional disagreements of slavery and the morality of it, among other factors, caused the Whig and Know-Nothing Party to end, and with the last remaining political party, Democratic Party, divided in 1860. New ones arose, Free Soil Party (1848), Constitutional Union (1860), and the Republican Party...