SECTION 1: Slavery, States’ Rights, and Western Expansion
◄ Jefferson Davis
WITNESS HISTORY 
AUDIO
Why Limit Slavery Only in the Territories?
The Free-Soil Party argued that slavery should not expand into the territories. Senator Jefferson Davis questioned the new party’s motives. Why would they only try to limit slavery in the territories but not in the states? Rather than true concern for the slaves, Davis believed they had another purpose.
“It is not humanity that influences you…. It is that you may have an opportunity of cheating [the South] that you want to limit slave territory…. It is that you may have a majority in the Congress of the United States and convert the Government into an engine of northern aggrandizement. It is that your section may grow in power and prosperity upon treasures unjustly taken from the South…. [Y]ou want … to promote the industry of the New England states, at the expense of the people of the South and their industry.”
—Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi
Objectives
- Contrast the economies, societies, and political views of the North and the South.
- Describe the role of the Free-Soil Party in the election of 1848.
- Analyze why slavery in the territories was a divisive issue between North and South and how Congress tried to settle the issue in 1850.
Terms and People
- Wilmot Proviso
- Free-Soil Party
- popular sovereignty
- secede
- Compromise of 1850
- Fugitive Slave Act
NoteTaking
Reading Skill: Categorize Organize people, groups, and ideas by their position on slavery.
Why It Matters From the nation’s earliest days, the issue of slavery divided Americans. As the nation expanded, the problem became more pressing. Should slavery be allowed in the new western territories? Southerners said yes; many northerners said no. Section Focus Question: How did Congress try to resolve the dispute between North and South over slavery?
Slavery Divides the Nation
After the American Revolution, the North and the South developed distinctly different ways of life. The North developed busy cities, embraced technology and industry, and built factories staffed by paid workers. As immigrants arrived in northern ports, the North became an increasingly diverse society.
The South, on the other hand, remained an agrarian, or agricultural, society. The southern economy and way of life was based largely on a single crop: cotton. To grow cotton, southern planters depended on the labor of enslaved African Americans.
By the mid-nineteenth century, cotton cultivation and slavery had spread across the Deep South—that is, through Florida and Alabama into Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. As the country continued to expand, Americans faced a crucial question: Should slavery be allowed to spread to new American territories west of the Mississippi River?
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