Not Making Progress

This week in honors history 10 class we learned about "the Elephant in the Room". The elephant in the room is Defined as an issue that is present but is avoided.The essential question for this topic was "how do we know the debate over slavery was the "elephant in the room" for American politics in early 19th century?" To help answer this question we got into groups of three and took notes on 14 topics. With these notes we had to decide if they were anti-slavery or proslavery. Once we knew that we had this information each group made a timeline summarizing these 14 events. 

During the 1850's slavery was the elephant in the room to society but not everyone agreed. Some people were considered "proslavery" which meant that they liked slavery and were for it. The people that were against slavery were anti-slavery. The 1533 Gadsden purchase was proslavery. This was proslavery because the United States purchased $10 million dollars of land to make railroads. These railroads helped transport slaves to the south and so people could vote for slave territories. Also the Kansas Nebraska act was proslavery also. The Kansas Nebraska act is pro slavery because it allows slaves to go to the north of the line. This completely violates the Missouri compromise. The Missouri compromise allowed slavery in only the western territories of the United States. Not all of the Kansas Nebraska act was proslavery though. The Other part of the Kansas Nebraska act created railroads in Chicago so that anti-slavery people could travel to vote against slavery. Senator Charles Summers was a person that believed in anti-slavery. He made a speech called "The Crime Against Kansas". During this speech he talked about how slavery was cruel and all the bad things about it. Summer got badly injured by senator Andrew Butler because he discussed him and his thoughts on how he thought slavery was good. 

Slavery was a big issue and caused "the elephant in the room". These four acts answer the essential question because slavery was such a big issue and yes people wanted to fix it but it was mostly just avoided. If you were anti-slavery people who were proslavery never listened to you and made the situation better.

(This is my groups timeline)