Elephant in the Room

            Slavery was a popular debate topic for American politics in the early 19th century. The North didn't feel it was morally just to keep the practice of slavery alive. On the other hand, the South supported slavery because they used the slaves to work the cotton fields. Also, the debate brought up the essential question, "How do we know the debate over slavery was the "elephant in the room" for American politics in the early 19th century?" To answer this question we researched various events that were related to the debate. For example, The Compromise of 1850 and the Crime Against Kansas Speech. Then, we took all of the information and put it into a timeline to neatly display the data.
            We can conclude that slavery was the "elephant in the room" because it was an obvious problem that no one could come up with a concrete, final, and fair solution for it. All the ideas acted upon were only temporary because the issue of slavery kept coming back. The Compromise of 1850 holds an example of a temporary solution, the Fugitive Slave Act was passed. Since all runaway had to be returned back to their previous owner it made it seem like everything was under control. But problems started to occur when not every slave was returned and more and more kept escaping to the North.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1850

Fugitive Slave Act Poster

            New problems quickly raised from the previous problem. The Gadsden Purchase of 1853 was another short term answer. Since the purchase made it easier for the South to transport others to settle and vote territories to be slave states it meant that slavery would expand and become a bigger issue. To solve this problem the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed. Now the North had a chance to transport anti-slavery people into states where population votes slave status. This still wasn't a permanent solution though. Charles Sumner can prove that these two acts weren't the final solution. While giving a speech he managed to anger Preston Brooks. Brooks then proceeded to beat Sumner with his cane. Brooks proved that slavery was still a massive issue that was never addressed properly and has the ability to cause civilized men to resort to violence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner

The Caning of Charles Sumner

            If slavery wasn't the "elephant in the room" politicians would have been able to finalize a decision on slavery instead of putting the topic aside time after time.

Final Timeline