An Elephant In The Room: Slavery in America

The Essential Question for the Elephant in the Room unit was this: How do we know that the debate over slavery was the 'elephant in the room' for American politics in the early 19th century? A prime example of proving this is The Compromise of 1820 - there were now 11 of both slave and free states, as Missouri was added to the slave states to even out the addition of Maine to the free states. Missouri was going to be over the 'slave line", but the imbalance didn't seem fair to the South- they wanted the same amount of slave states as free states. However, one should note that the south didn't straight out say that this was about slavery, but everyone knew it was. Another reason slavery was the elephant in the room was because of the Compromise of 1850 - California had requested to be a free state, and a 5 part compromise was proposed by Henry Clay, which can be read about here. Another event that indicated slavery was the elephant in the room was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. The North wanted to build a transcontinental railroad to make Chicago a huge trading and transportation hub (it'd be the start of the railroad) - Not only would this be a big trading opportunity, it would also make it easier to transport northerner abolitionists to the western frontiers, offsetting the imbalance in pro-slavers and anti-slavers - this in turn negated the Missouri Compromise line. One final point to reinforce slavery as the elephant in the room was Kansas’ bloody civil mini-war. A collection of outbursts so violent, the Kansas territory earned the nickname ‘Bleeding Kansas’ (1856) These bloody spats were started when some pro-slavery looters' actions raised a response from John Brown (the same man who was put to death for leading a raid on Harpers Ferry Federal Armory. He attempted to steal weapons and give them to slaves - for this was martyrized) - he killed some pro-slavery people, resulting in retaliation, and this went back and forth for a while. This fighting was publicly viewed and talked about as territorial disputes, not directly related to slavery. I've included a timeline of major events around this period, which can be seen here: