A cartoon from 1854 depicted a giant free soiler being held down by James Buchanan and Lewis Cass. Franklin Pierce also holds down the giant's beard as Stephen A. Douglas shoves a black man down his throat. There is no evidence for it, but the giant free soiler looks a little like Abraham Lincoln.
In 1820 the Missouri Compromise prohibited slavery beyond the 36th parallel except for the proposed boundaries of Missouri. California was also later accepted as a free state in the 1850 compromise. In 1854 under the leadership of Franklin Pierce, the 1820 compromise was repealed by the Nebraska Kansas Act. Slavery would now be allowed in Northern Territories through "Popular Sovereignty". Franklin Pierce was a strong advocate of the sovereignty of individual states, and the choice of slavery there within. Today, his words regarding race are very difficult to read, but In his 1855 address to congress, he outlined his history of "white" America and the "right" of slavery. Franklin Pierce was taking us closer to civil war. Here are a few excerpts:
"The political result [of the revolution] was the foundation of a Federal Republic of the free white men of the colonies, constituted, as they were, in distinct and reciprocally independent State governments. As for the subject races, whether Indian or African, the wise and brave statesmen of that day, being engaged in no extravagant scheme of social change, left them as they were, and thus preserved themselves and their posterity"
"Each State expressly stipulated, as well for itself as for each and all of its citizens, and every citizen of each State became solemnly bound by his allegiance to the Constitution that any person held to service or labor in one State, escaping into another, should not, in consequence of any law or regulation thereof, be discharged from such service or labor, but should be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor might be due by the laws of his State." (Fugitive Act)
"Disunion for what? If the passionate rage of fanaticism and partisan spirit did not force the fact upon our attention, it would be difficult to believe that any considerable portion of the people of this enlightened country could have so surrendered themselves to a fanatical devotion to the supposed interests of the relatively few Africans in the United States as totally to abandon and disregard the interests of the 25,000,000 Americans; to trample under foot the injunctions of moral and constitutional obligation, and to engage in plans of vindictive"
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