EOTO #1 Reax.

    Today we heard both sides of the Founding Era and how it advanced and fought against slavery. As expected due to the constant fight that slavery was back in the 1800s, there are several key events and other factors that played pivotal roles for and against slavery—starting with the events that supported slavery and helped it continue its control and power in the new United States of America. The Nullification Crisis is deemed as the start of the tensions between the North and the South. With tariffs being placed on the southern states along with military force being enacted on these states to avoid conflict, only the opposite of these goals was achieved. Southern states were irate by these restrictions and started to threaten secession from the nation. Next, the Fugitive Slave Act, as part of the Compromise of 1850, mandated that escaped slaves be returned to their owners. This regulation displayed the government's commitment to upholding slavery which only further divided the Northern free states and the Southern slave states.  

    Next was Bleeding Kansas, the violence sparked by John Brown and his belief that the fight against slavery was a "holy war" and how a compromise was unattainable between the North and South over slavery. Bleeding Kansas itself, was the repeated attacks from both pro and anti-slavery forces after the formation of Kansas as a new territory of the United States. After the events in Kanas, we have the establishing attack of the Civil War with the Southern attack of Ft. Sumter. Up until this point, six states had already seceded from the Union and a civil war was already inevitable. However, on April 12th, 1861, the Confederates fired and charged towards the Union's fort right off the South Carolina coastline. 

    Now changing sides to the events and factors that fought against slavery, first highlighted was the Underground Railroad. As known many heroic people served in the Underground Railroad such as Harriett Tubman, Frederick Douglass, William Still, and many others. These leaders of the long trails of tunnels, homes, and other forms of transportation that were coined with the railroad term, put their lives in danger to save thousands of lives from the tragedies and horrors of slavery. Another way that slavery was pushed against was the anti-slavery newspapers such as The Liberator and The North Star founded by Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison. These newspapers targeted the negatives of slavery and highlighted the terrors over the years before, during, and after the Civil War to push for emancipation and rights for slaves. 

    Next, there are the slave uprisings and rebellions, especially Nat Turner and Touissant L'Overture and their respective led rebellions. Turner, by the belief in God, worked to free those enslaved and with her seventy-five followers rebelled against the white slave owners but were caught and sentenced to be hung. However, her actions led to several slave rebellions across the southern land. Meanwhile, in Haiti, down in Saint Domingue, Touissant L'Overture was starting his rebellion with his fellow slaves against the French. L'Overture and the Haitian slaves ended up being victorious in their rebellion leading to the independence of Haiti from French rule in 1804. Finally, there was the abolishment of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, a route that moved over twelve million Africans to the Americas for the sole purpose of working as slaves. After four hundred years, the United States finally abolished the importation of slaves in 1808 ending the Slave Trade once and for all.