The Sectional Crisis

Before that the mason dixon line separating maryland and pennsylvania and the ohio river served as the traditional borders between freedom and slavery.

The sectional crisis. After 1846 the sectional crisis raged throughout north america. Debates swirled over whether the new lands would be slave or free. Battles emerged over the westward expansion of slavery and over the role of the federal government in protecting the interests of slaveholders.

It ensued after south carolina declared that the federal tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and therefore null and void within the sovereign boundaries of the state. At the same time congressman david wilmot submitted his wilmot proviso late in 1846 banning the expansion of slavery into the territories won from mexico. The nullification crisis was a united states sectional political crisis in 1832 33 during the presidency of andrew jackson which involved a confrontation between the state of south carolina and the federal government.

English colonies north and south relied on enslaved workers who grew tobacco harvested indigo and sugar and worked in ports. Final crisis led to south seceding from the union and the civil war bloodiest u. Government in the 1850s when the southern states threatened to leave the union.

It helped splinter the atlantic basin into clear zones of freedom and un freedom while in the process shattering the longstanding assumption that african slaves could not also be rulers. During the 1850s sectional differences within the united states largely about slavery grew wider as the country s leaders debated whether to allow slavery to expand into the western territories and as criticism of slavery intensified in some free states. The south began defending slavery as a positive good.

The problems faced by the u s. The sectional crisis sectionalism in the early republic. Slavery s history stretched back to antiquity.

However the ohio river flowed into the mississippi so the agreed upon line ran out. Prior to the american revolution nearly everyone in the world accepted it as a natural part of life. The haitian revolution marked an early origin of the sectional crisis.