Evaluate the extent to which debates over slavery in the period 1830 to 1860 led the United States into the Civil War. (2019)
The period from 1830 to 1860 witnessed a series of historic debates over the morality, economic impact, and political consequences of slavery. Although moral and economic issues were important, the debates failure to resolve political issues led the United States into a bloody Civil War.
The Missouri Compromise of 1820 defused the political crisis over the status of slavery in the Louisiana Territory. The compromise resolved the immediate problems by maintaining a sectional balance of power in the Senate and by forbidding slavery north of the 36 – 30 line. However, the Missouri Compromise debates did not address the underlying cultural and economic differences between a Southern plantation economy that depended on slave labor and a Northern commercial economy that relied on free labor. As a result, increasingly contentious debates over the moral, economic, and political consequences of slavery repeatedly threatened to disrupt national unity.
