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DOCUMENT A

          "Sir, there are those abolition societies, of which I am unwilling to speak, but in regard to which I have very clear notions and opinions. I do not think them useful. I think their operations of the last twenty years have produced nothing good or valuable.
          I do not mean to impute gross motives even to the leaders of these societies, but I am not blind to the consequences. I cannot but see what mischiefs their interference with the South has produced…
          These abolition societies commenced their course of action in 1835. It is said—I do not know how true it may be—that they sent incendiary publications into the slave states. At any event, they attempted to arouse, and did arouse, a very strong feeling. In other words, they created great agitation in the North against Southern slavery”.

Source: Daniel Webster's speech in the Senate, March 7, 1850.

DOCUMENT C

          "Tom spoke in a mild voice, but with a decision that could not be mistaken. Legree shook with anger; his greenish eyes glared fiercely, and his very whiskers seemed to curl with passion. But, like some ferocious beast, that plays with its victim before he devours it, he kept back his strong impulse to proceed to immediate violence, and broke into bitter raillery...
          An't I yer master? Didn't I pay down twelve hundred dollars, cash, for all there is inside yer old cussed black shell? An't yer mine now body and soul?" he said, giving Tom a violent kick with his heavy boot; "tell me!"

Source: Harriet Beecher Stowe and "Uncle Tom's Cabin" published in 1852.

DOCUMENT D

“In my opinion our government can endure forever, divided into free and slave States as our fathers made it, --each State having the right to prohibit, abolish, or sustain slavery, just as it pleases. This government was made upon the great basis of the sovereignty of the states, the right 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. Our fathers knew, when they made the government, that the laws and institutions which were well adapted to the green mountains of Vermont, were unsuited to the rice plantations of South Carolina”.

Source: Stephen Douglas' speech at Alton, Illinois (October 15, 1858).

DOCUMENT F

          “Sir, what protection does this law lend to the poor, weak, oppressed, degraded slave whose flesh had often quivered under the lash of his inhuman owner? whose youth had been spent in labor for another? whose intellect has been nearly blotted out? When he seeks an asylum in a land of freedom, this worse than barbarous law sends the officers of government to chase him down. The people are constrained to become his pursuers…
          Sir, there is not a man in this body—there is not an intelligent man in the free states—but knows if he delivers a fugitive into the custody of his pursuers, that he will be carried to the South and sold to the sugar and cotton plantations. And his life will be sacrificed in five years if employed on the sugar plantations, and in seven years on the cotton plantations.
          The common law, sir, holds him who aids in a murder as guilty as he who strikes the knife to the heart of the victim. Under our law, a man is hanged if he fails to prevent a murder when it is plainly in his power to do so. Such man is held guilty of the act, and he is hanged accordingly. The man who should assist in the capture of a fugitive would be regarded by us as guilty as he under whose lash the victim expires.
          To capture a slave and send him to the South, to die under a torture of five years, is far more criminal than ordinary murder. Sir, we will not commit this crime. Let me say to the President, no power of government can compel us to involve ourselves in such guilt. No! The freemen of Ohio will never turn out to chase the panting fugitive—they will never be metamorphosed into bloodhounds, to track him to his hiding-place, and seize and drag him out, and deliver him to his tormentors. Rely upon it, they will die first. Let no man tell me there is no higher law than this fugitive bill. We feel there is a law of right, of justice, of freedom, implanted in the breast of every intelligent human being that bids him look with scorn upon this libel upon all that is called law”.

Source: Joshua Giddings in his speech in Congress, 1850.

DOCUMENT G

“A house divided against itself can not stand”. I believe this Government can not endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South."

Source: Lincoln's speech given at the Republican state convention in Springfield, Illinois (June 17, 1858).

DOCUMENT H

          "The slave system is one of constant danger, distrust, suspicion, and watchfulness. It debases those whose toil alone can produce wealth and resources for defense to the lowest degree of which human nature is capable, to guard against mutiny and insurrection, and this wastes energies which otherwise might be employed in national development and aggrandizement...
          In states where the slave system prevails, the masters directly or indirectly secure all political power and constitute a ruling aristocracy. In states where the free-labor system prevails, universal suffrage necessarily obtains and the state inevitably becomes sooner or later a republic or democracy.
          The two systems are at once perceived to be incongruous - they are incompatible. They never have permanently existed together in one country, and they never can. Hitherto, the two systems have existed in different states, but side by side within the American Union. This has happened because the Union is a confederation of states. But in another aspect the United States constitute only one nation. Increase of population which is filling the states out to their very borders, together with a new and extended network of railroads and other avenues, and an internal commerce which daily becomes more intimate, is rapidly bringing the states into a higher and more perfect social unity of consolidation. Thus, these antagonistic systems are continually coming into closer contact, and collision results.
          The Democratic Party derived its strength originally from its adoption of the principles of equal and exact justice to all men. So long as it practised this principle faithfully, it was invulnerable. It became vulnerable when it renounced the principle, and since that time it has maintained itself not by virtue of its own strength, or even of its traditional merits, but because there as yet had appeared in the political field no other party that had the conscience and the courage to take up, and avow, and practice the life-inspiring principle which the Democratic Party surrendered...
          At last, the Republican Party had appeared. It avows now, as the Republican Party of 1800 did, in one word, its faith and its works, "Equal and exact justice to all men." The secret of its assured success lies in that very characteristic, which in the mouth of scoffers constitutes its great and lasting imbecility and reproach. It lies in the fact that it is a party of one idea; but that idea is a noble one - an idea that fills and expands all generous souls - the idea of equality - the equality of all men before human tribunals and human laws, as they are equal before the divine tribunal and divine laws."

Source: William Seward, speech, Rochester, New York (October 25, 1858).

DOCUMENT I

          "Some time since a Senator from Massachusetts allowed himself, in an elaborately prepared speech, to offer a gross insult to my State, and to a venerable friend, who is my State representative, and who was absent at the time.
          So far as public interests or constitutional rights are involved, I have now exhausted my means of defence. I may, then, be allowed to take a more personal view of the question at issue. The further prosecution of this subject, in the shape it has now assumed, may not only involve my friends, but the House itself, in agitations which might be unhappy in their consequences to the country. If these consequences could be confined to myself individually, I think I am prepared and ready to meet them, here or elsewhere; and when I use this language I mean what I say. But others must not suffer for me...
          If I desired to kill the Senator, why did not I do it? You all admit that I had him in my power. Let me tell the member from New Jersey that it was expressly to avoid taking life that I used an ordinary cane, presented to me by a friend in Baltimore, nearly three months before its application to the " bare head " of the Massachusetts Senator. I went to work very deliberately, as I am charged and this is admitted and speculated somewhat as to whether I should employ a horsewhip or a cowhide; but knowing that the Senator was my superior in strength, it occurred to me that he might wrest it from my hand, and then for I never attempt any thing I do not perform I might have been compelled to do that which I would have regretted the balance of my natural life."

Source: Violence in the Senate--“Bully” Brooks attack on Charles Sumner (1856).

DOCUMENT J

          "The question is simply this: can a negro whose ancestors were imported into this country and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights, and privileges, and immunities, guarantied by that instrument to the citizen. One of these rights is the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified in the Constitution. . . .
          The words 'people of the United States' and 'citizens' are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty, and who hold the power and conduct the government through their representatives. They are what we familiarly call the 'sovereign people,' and every citizen is one of this people, and a constituent member of this sovereignty. The question before us is, whether the class of persons described in the plea of abatement compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty. We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution, and can, therefore, claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for an secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the government might choose to grant them. . . .
          But in considering the question before us, it must be borne in mind that there is no law of nations standing between the people of the United States and their government and interfering with their relation to each other. The powers of the government and the rights of the citizen under it, are positive and practical regulations plainly written down.
          If the Constitution recognizes the right of property of the master in a slave, and makes no distinction between that description of property and other property owned by a citizen, no tribunal, acting under the authority of the United States, whether it be legislative, executive, or judicial, has a right to draw such a distinction, or deny to it the benefit of the provisions and guarantees which have been provided for the protection of private property against the encroachments of the government."

Source: Supreme Court decision from Chief Justice Roger B. Taney on the Dred Scott v. Sanford case (1857).

DOCUMENT K

          "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so...
          Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes...
          No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

Source: Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address (1861).

FULL BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCE OF THE ABOVE DOCUMENTS

1) Newman, John J., and John M. Schmalbach. United States History: Preparing for the advanced placement examination. Amsco School Publications Inc: New York, 2002.

2) Shi, David E., and George Brown Tindall. America: A Narrative History. W. W. Norton and Company Inc: New York; London, 1999.

3) The Association of Teacher's Websites-Spartacus Educational; "William Seward's Speech;" last revised 10 March 2002; <http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASseward.htm>

4) Bailey, Thomas A., David M. Kennedy. The American Spirit. 9th ed. The Board of Trustees of Leland: Stamford, Connecticut 1998.

5) Fort, Donald S., Salli Vargis; "Bleeding Kansas and the Caning of Sumner;" last revised 20 June 1996; <http://www.iath.virginia.edu/seminar/unit4/brooks.html>

6) Encyclopedia.com; "Dred Scott versus Sanford;" last revised 2002; <http://www.Irz-muenchen.de/^^amerika-institut/downloads/gk1/dredscott.html>

7) Heffner, Richard D. A Documentary History of the United States. 6th ed. Penguin Putnam Inc: New York, 1999. 172-73.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL WORKS REFERENCE

1) Abbot, Carl, et al., eds. The American Journey: A History of the United States. Combined Volume. Prentice-Hall: Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 2001.

2) Lloyd Benson-Furman University Department of History from U.S. House of Representatives, 34th Congress, Ist session; "Sumner's Crime Against Kansas Speech;" last revised 2002; <http://www.furman.edu/^^benson/docs/sumnerksh2.htm