9781422272701

“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” 1

—abolitionist Frederick Douglass

States. The international slave trade was outlawed in 1808, although slaves in the United States could still be bought or sold. Slavery was banned in the territories identified in the Northwest Ordinance (1787). In 1820, the Missouri Compromise prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30 ′ in the new lands acquired through the Louisiana Purchase (other than the new state of Missouri) and worked to keep the balance between slave and free states in the Union. Other agreements, like the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, sought to appease both sides of the growing divide over slavery’s expansion. Although lawmakers made many attempts to compromise on a legislative level and keep a balance between free and enslaved persons in the growing United States, tensions continued to grow between the regions of

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Overview of Slavery and Racial Discrimination in America