Essay American Civil War and Lecompton Constitution

Submitted By christybaker123
Words: 423
Pages: 2

Harriet Beecher Stowe was a white woman who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, as most of you know, is a book about slavery and it’s horrors. It was published in Europe as well as the US and helped spark the civil war.
Hilton R. Helper wrote The Impending Crisis in The South in 1857. Helper tried to use logic to argue that non-slave owning whites were the ones suffering from slavery. Dumb, right? Slave owners and blacks both hated it.

The North-South Contest for Kansas

The New Emigrant Aid Company financed groups of abolitionists to move to Kansas in hopes of seeing it as a free state.
In 1855 pro-slavery supporters from Missouri came to Kansas to elect officials. They succeeded in electing pro-slavery officials and set up the government at Shawnee Mission. In retaliation, the free soilers set up their own government in Topeka.
In 1856 a group of pro-slavery people (man my vocabulary is bad at 10pm) burned down the free town of Lawrence, starting the civil war in Kansas.
-Rudy M: pp. 441-446 (“Kansas in Convulsion”-”Dred Scott Bombshell”)
Kansas in Convulsion
John Brown- extreme abolitionist
May 1856-Led a group of followers to Pottawatomie Creek to hack up 5 people thought to be pro-slavery
Went against the free-soil cause
Escalated into Kansas joining the civil war
Kansas had enough to become a state with popular sovereignty
Lecompton Constitution- people could vote for the constitution “with slavery” or “without slavery”
Could not vote for/against the constitution as a whole
Would always result in slavery in Kansas
President Buchanan approved the Lecompton Constitution
Douglas was against the Lecompton Constitution
Compromise: Popular vote for Lecompton Constitution
Free soilers flooded polls
Kansas remained a territory until