Slavery and Sectionalism

November 1, 2011 By admin

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The Compromise of 1850 consisted of a series of laws dealing with the issue of slavery in the United States; this map shows the free and slave states in the United States after the Compromise (http://mrkash.com/activities/compromise.html)

Part of the Compromise of 1850 included the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which gave slave-catchers authority to operate nation-wide in apprehending escaped slaves; this broadside from Massachusetts expresses vehement disapproval of the act (Library of Congress)

"Operations of the Fugitive-Slave Law" (from Benson J. Lossing, Our Country, A Household History for All Readers, Vol. 3 [NY: Johnson & Miles, 1878], 1404)

This image by Winslow Homer shows the vicious caning of Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts by Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina in 1856 over the issue of slavery, one of the incidents in the 1850s that created a deep division between the North and the South (Library of Congress)

"K N - Quick Step Dedicated to the Know Nothings," sheet music, 1854; one of the political parties that formed in the 1850s was the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic Know Nothing Party (Library of Congress)

The Dred Scott case, decided in 1857 by the Supreme Court, ignited passionate feelings about slavery North and South, and is cited by some as one of the causes of the Civil War (Library of Congress)

Roger B. Taney, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, authored the majority opinion in the Dred Scott case in 1857; he had spent his early career in Frederick, MD, and was buried there following his death in 1864 (Library of Congress)

Following the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, Kansas became a battleground between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces; a "Peace Convention" at Fort Scott, Kansas in 1858 was anything but peaceful (from Albert D. Richardson, Beyond the Mississippi: From the Great River to the Great Ocean [1869], following p.128)

"A Slave Auction in Virginia," Illustrated London News, February 16, 1861 (from http://beck.library.emory.edu/iln/)

An advertisement in The American Sentinel of Westminster, MD, in 1860 of an enslaved African American woman for sale (The American Sentinel, July 27, 1860)

As a young man, Jeremiah Summers was enslaved to Henry Piper of Sharpsburg, MD (Courtesy of Edie Wallace)

Nancy Campbell (later changed to "Camel") was enslaved for forty-two years in Washington County before she was finally manumitted in 1859 (Courtesy of Edie Wallace)

Laura Frazier, born in 1851, was enslaved to the Walker Y. Page family of Frederick, MD, until slavery was abolished in Maryland in 1864. She looked after the Page children, and is shown here with Nannie Tyler Page and her daughter, Mary, c.1859. (Historical Society of Frederick County)

Slave quarters in southern Frederick County, photographed in 1936 (HABS/HAER, Library of Congress)

Notice of an award for two African American men who had escaped from slavery in Brunswick (then called Berlin) in Frederick County in 1855 (Frederick Examiner, May 30, 1855)

William Wright and his wife Phebe, of Adams County, PA, were Quakers and helped many enslaved African Americans escape through the Underground Railroad network in Pennsylvania (from Robert Clemens Smedley, History of the Underground Railroad in Chester and the Neighboring Counties of Pennsylvania, 1883, 37).

A map showing free and slave states in the United States in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War (Lincoln Home National Historic Site, NPS)

This project has been generously funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Park Service, the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority, Heart of the Civil War Heritage Area, Frederick Community College, and others. See Credits page for full list.

Catoctin Center for Regional Studies
Frederick Community College

7932 Opossumtown Pike
Frederick, MD 21702

Ph: 301-624-2773 | Email

Maryland and the Border
in the Civil War

Slavery and Sectionalism

Special Collections

Maryland and the Border in the Civil War

Slavery and Sectionalism

Special Collections

Maryland and the Border
in the Civil War