This episode of the podcast contains explicit language.

Hey everyone, welcome to episode number 12 of our Civil War podcast.

I'm Rich and I'm Tracy. Hello, y'all. Thanks for turning into the podcast.

So once again, we're going to return to the compromise of 1850.

As we talked about previously on the show, the compromise hadn't reduced the tension between north and south over the issue of slavery.

In fact, part of the compromise, the new fugitive slave law only served to ramp up that tension considerably.

The enhanced fugitive slave law and its high-handed enforcement by the federal government in the 1850s roused the ire of northerners.

The controversial captures of runaway slaves combined with the sensational impact of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, fueled anti-slavery sentiment in the north.

And it's worth pointing out again that the law was an affront to states' rights, especially the personal liberty laws of several northern states.

The operation of the fugitive slave law trampled on the rights and sovereignty of free northern states to the benefit of slave owners.

So it's ironic that after the Civil War, southerners would start to claim that their cause had been all about upholding states' rights.

Despite the increased sectional tension related to the fugitive slave law, Stephen Douglas, the senator from Illinois who had shepherded the compromise of 1850 through Congress, could take comfort in the fact that since the compromise's passage, slavery hadn't been a significant issue of debate on Capitol Hill.

But that changed in 1854.

That's because, as settlers continued to push westward, the politicians were once again forced to deal with the political balance of power and Congress between free states and slave states.

Since the Missouri Compromise in 1820, the geographic 3630 line had worked relatively well, mostly because states entered the Union and Pairs.

First there was Maine, and Missouri, then Michigan, and my home state of Arkansas, and then there was Iowa and Wisconsin, which were balanced by Florida and Texas.

Only in 1850 did Congress deviate from this system when it allowed California in as a free state, although it had once again respected the 3630 boundary line with the disposition of the New Mexico territory.

But then in January 1854, Stephen Douglas introduced into the Senate a report of the Committee on Territories, which he chaired.

The report recommended the creation of two new territories in the Louisiana Purchase Lands, Kansas and Nebraska.

In advancing this plan, Douglas might have been chiefly motivated by his desire to get a transcontinental railroad built across the plains to California.

There had already been much debate over the path such a railroad would take across America.

There were some who favored a southern route, while others favored a northern route.

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