Casey Coleman

DBQ
During the early nineteenth century, Americans sought to resolve their political disputes
through compromise; however, by the 1860s this was no longer an option. The reasons
compromise could no longer work was that the tension between political parties was rising and
compromises could not satisfy either side to an acceptable limit because both the North's and the
South's views were too different.
To begin, the declaration of the National Anti-slavery Convention (Doc B) states that the
North's views was that slave owners are to be considered "man stealers" and that they are to
receive no compensation for the emancipation of their slaves. The purpose of this document is to
state exactly what the groups views are and how immoral slavery truly is, as well as state how
they believe congress should go about the abolition of slavery. The South on the other hand,
believed that they are entirely dependent on slavery and will not settle that issue for any reason.
Knowing this, the House of Representatives during the Resolution of the Pinckney Committee
(Doc C) came up with the idea to take no action in regards to slavery. The purpose of this
decision was to keep the government from taking a stance towards either side of slavery, which
prevented the separation of the North or the South from America based on their stance. Of
course, with the government lacking to take action, that prevents either side from being satisfied
with the conditions of the time.
To continue, there was the issue within the government itself. As shown in J.L. Magees
political cartoon (Doc E), there were different views coming from within the government itself;
the image shows South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks beating abolitionist Senator
Charles Sumner. The image was clearly from the perspective of an abolitionist as the image
infers that abolition is the argument, and the counter argument is clubs or beating people up. The

Casey Coleman
point of the image as a whole however, is that the government couldnt take a stance, as the
argument existed within the government as well. Then, there is the states going up against the
government, as seen in Senator Henry Clays speech (Doc A). During the Nullification crisis,
South Carolina was supposedly considering succession, however Clays perspective argument
was that South Carolina was testing to see if she can defeat the execution of certain laws and
that during this time, everything was a struggle for power to see what can and cannot be done.
With Clays intended audience being the Senate, he was trying to get the point across that the
government should stand up and take a stance and not allow the states to be playing these
political games. As Abraham Lincoln makes apparent during his speech at Alton (Doc G),
slavery isnt all politics, it can be looked at from a religion or moral viewpoint and that the
government doesnt need to bring politics into the argument any more than it already is. In a
common light, a lot of issues like to be put onto the government and have political games begin,
such as prohibition during the second great awakening. However, this isnt necessarily the
governments decision which is why compromise gets us in a lot of trouble. During the KansasNebraska Act, slavery was put to debate with popular sovereignty, even though the Missouri
Compromise clearly states that slavery is banned north of the 36 30 line.
This is one of the most controversial times in American history, and there werent many
ways to situation the problems. Compromise would clearly upset one or both sides and spark a
war, government taking a hard stance may cause succession, so one argument could be to have a
separate government for the North and the South, to break the country in two. Of course, Senator
Daniel Webster (Doc D) makes the ever so prominent point, that we could not sit down and
draw a line of separation that would satisfy any five men in the country. His purpose was to put

Casey Coleman
to rest the idea of separation as it was an impossibility and that really left no way for the country
to fix the issue of slavery at the time. Unfortunately, the tension was too high and the arguments
to farsighted on either end, that the ending was really the only reasonable conclusion, a war.