Last-minute Notes: Kansas-Nebraska, Bleeding Kansas, Republican Party, Secession

Congress revoked the $1820$ Missouri Compromise; new states (e.g., Kansas, Nebraska) would vote on slavery via popular sovereignty.
Pro-slavery expansion: Missourians pushed to make Kansas a slave state; territory saw proslavery vs antislavery clashes.
Missouri tensions spillover: records stolen from the territorial capital; militia called by Governor Lowburn W. Fox to expel Mormons; language described Mormons as intolerable and to be excluded or exterminated.
"Bleeding Kansas": armed conflict between proslavery and antislavery factions before the Civil War.
Formation of the Republican Party as a response; goal: prevent expansion of slavery into new territories; not an immediate plan to end slavery in existing slave states; hoped a free-state majority would enable abolitionist measures.

By $1860$ , enslaved population in the US was about $4{,}000{,}000$ ; at the time of the Revolution it was around $400{,}000$ .
The transcript argues slavery in the Americas did not come from Americans kidnapping Africans; instead, Africans were captured by African nations in wars and sold to Muslims and Europeans.
West Africa trade and wars produced slaves who then moved to the Americas and other regions.
The Atlantic slave trade was effectively ended by the British in $1807$ ; the Royal Navy patrolled West Africa to stop shipments.
The enslaved population in the US largely descended from earlier African slave trades rather than later imports.

The Republican Party formed among people who opposed the expansion of slavery into new territories.
The strategy: limit expansion so slavery would wither; build a free-state majority in Congress to enable abolitionist legislation.

In $1860$ , Lincoln was elected; the Democratic Party was split over slavery and its expansion, weakening pro-slavery support (one candidate mentioned is Stephen A. Douglas).
Southern states decided to secede, arguing they could no longer be part of a federal union where they would become a minority.
They invoked the Supremacy Clause (Article VI): federal law is the supreme law of the land and judges must uphold it over state laws.
Seceding states claimed the Constitution was not authored by the states but by the people, and thus states could separate; they sought to form a Confederacy.
In their declarations of secession, they omitted the Declaration of Independence line: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

Supremacy Clause: federal Constitution and laws are the supreme law; states’ laws are subordinate.
The secessionists argued that their actions were lawful under their reading of the Constitution, but the transcript emphasizes that such secession violated the clause and broader constitutional framework.
The Declaration of Independence affirms equality, which the secessionist declarations conspicuously omit, signaling a rejection of that principle in their justification.