Six Degrees of Separation: to Compromise of 1877 Andrea Gonzalez and Alicia Abdon 5 period Missouri Compromise

The Missouri Compromise was an effort by congress to defuse the sectional and political tensions triggered by the request of Missouri in 1819 for admission into the union as a state in which slavery would be permitted, which would have offset the balance of free and slave states in the country. It allowed Missouri to enter the union as a slave state and it also prohibited slavery north of latitude 36 30’ within the territory. This act was ultimately negated by the Kansas- Nebraska Act of 1854. Kansas- Nebraska Act The Kansas-Nebraska Act, designed by senator Douglas, created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska for new settlement. The settlers were able to decide, by popular sovereignty, whether slavery would exist in that territory or not, which would ultimately repeal the Missouri Compromise. Douglas thought that popular sovereignty would ease tensions so that he would not have to pick a side of the slavery issue. Some felt that the Missouri compromise should still be followed. This debate would lead and that would eventually lead to the nationwide debate through the civil war. Bleeding Kansas

Southerners wanted to keep slavery afloat whilst the North wanted to abolish it. Bleeding Kansas established that the citizens of a territory could decide whether or not to have slavery by enacting popular sovereignty. Southerners wanted to keep slavery afloat whilst the north wanted to abolish it. This immensely increased sectionalism between the North and the South and subsequently led to the Civil War. The Civil War

The Civil War was fought between the Northern (Union) and Southern (Confederates) states over the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in the states. When Lincoln became president, seven slave states in the south seceded and formed their own nation. The confederate states of America. This would come to test whether or not America would continue to be a slaveholder or not. The northern union victory preserved the as one nation that would end slavery. Emancipation Proclamation

The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 committed the nation to ending slavery in the rebellion states. It marked the official beginning of freedom for enslaved African Americans in the Confederacy, although many did not hear of it for several months. The Union victory in the Civil War in 1865 may have given some 4 million slaves their freedom, but the process of rebuilding the South during the Reconstruction period (1865-1877) introduced a new set of significant challenges. Reconstruction

During Radical Reconstruction, which began in 1867, newly enfranchised blacks gained a voice in government for the first time in American history, winning election to southern state legislatures and even to the U.S. Congress. Although the military conflict had ended, Reconstruction was in many ways still a war. This important struggle was waged by radical northerners who wanted to punish the South and Southerners who desperately wanted to preserve their way of life. This eventually led to the Compromise of 1877 to end the . Compromise of 1877 The Compromise of 1877 was an agreement that the Democrats would accept the Republican electors allowing Rutherford B. Hayes to take the presidency only if the Republicans agreed to their terms. They demanded the departure of troops from the South, adding at least one southern Democrat into Hayes's administration, and the construction of a transcontinental railroad in the South. Democrats quickly won control in all of the Southern states. Instead of continuing with the Reconstruction efforts to improve civil rights for black freed slaves, the South put an end to many of those advances and brought about an era of poverty and segregation for blacks.