Evaluate the impact of growing sectionalism and the failure of compromise, including the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott decision, and the abolitionist movement (GSE SSUSH8, Domain 2).

What this topic is asking

SSUSH8 asks you to evaluate how sectionalism grew and why a series of compromises over slavery finally failed, pushing the nation toward civil war. You need the chain of compromises and crises, the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850 and Fugitive Slave Act, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Dred Scott decision, plus the abolitionist movement that kept the moral pressure on. This is a heavily tested Domain 2 topic and the climax of the road to war.

The compromises that held, for a while

The compromises that broke

The abolitionist movement

Abolitionists kept the moral argument alive and made compromise harder, because they refused to treat slavery as merely a political bargaining chip. Southern defenders responded by defending slavery ever more aggressively, widening the gulf.

Why compromise finally failed

Each compromise solved one crisis but set up the next, and over time the two sides stopped trusting any deal. The Fugitive Slave Act made Northerners complicit in slavery; the Kansas-Nebraska Act broke a settled line; Dred Scott seemed to make slavery legal everywhere. By the late 1850s, sectionalism had hardened into two irreconcilable camps, and the election of 1860 would tip the nation into war.

Try this

Q1. Explain why the Fugitive Slave Act angered many Northerners. [2]

• Cue. It required Northern citizens and officials to help capture and return escaped enslaved people, forcing them to take part in slavery even in free states, which many found morally intolerable.

Q2. Explain how the Dred Scott decision made compromise harder. [2]

• Cue. By ruling that African Americans were not citizens and that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories, it struck down the Missouri Compromise and seemed to legalize slavery everywhere, enraging the North and removing the basis for further deals.