Underground Slavery Causes

Another event that caused more tension between the North and South was the Dred Scott vs. Sanford case. In 1857, Dred Scott tried to sue his way out of being a slave. But the Supreme Court declared that Dred Scott would still remain a slave and that blacks were “so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect” (Trigger Events). This decision threatened to break the compromises remaining that had prevented from a civil war from happening.
In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act forced the North to capture and return escaped slaves back to the South. This upset the North because they were against slavery and did not want to be involved with slavery at all (Trigger). This helped the South also. The Underground …show more content…
For example, Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy, said “The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us, the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the ‘rock upon which the old Union would split.’ He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact”(Slavery). Stephens was a major politician during the Civil War and was saying that slavery was the cause of the conflict that was happening between the two sides. However most people in the South could not afford slaves and people in the North were tradesmen or small farmers so they literally did not have a chance to see a slave (James). One big factor about slavery was that the South was heavily depended on it to keep its economy from collapsing. Slavery was a huge portion of the South’s economy (Civil). So with the North’s opposition towards slavery and the election of Abraham Lincoln, the South saw both of those things as a threat to its economy and threatened to secede in order to preserve slavery (Foner