Posts Tagged ‘Antebellum Era’

In 1850, Congress defused a crisis over slavery’s expansion by breaking it into five separate laws. One of those laws — a far more coercive Fugitive Slave Act — did more to divide the country than any of the concessions meant to hold it together.

Three times across three decades, Congress faced a sectional crisis — and three times, Henry Clay helped assemble a deal to pull it back from the brink. Each bargain held for a while. None settled every conflict underneath.

A Southampton County preacher reads scripture and sky over two nights in August 1831 and sets off the deadliest slave revolt in American history — prompting a major legal crackdown on enslaved and free Black Virginians.