The issue of whether the territories would be slave or free came to a boil following the election of Zachary Taylor as president in 1848.
Part 2 explores how war with Mexico in the mid-1840s accelerathe the debate by raising the question of whether territory gained by the United States in that conflict would be slave or free.
When in 1854, Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas introduced his Kansas-Nebraska Bill, allowing residents of each territory to decide whether it would be slave or free, Greeley strongly fought the legislation in his newspaper.
If the answer is yes, most of today's migrant workers would be slaves too.
The Britons who "never, never, never" would be slaves had already faced one Jacobite rebellion in 1715, and would face another in 1745, both supported by France.
"There would be slaves coming out, this guy coming from Newport, that guy coming from Heyward [Plantation], taking maybe a couple weeks to get to the lines, hiding in the swamps taking their chances, moving at night," Grigg says.
If our lives were portrayed in a movie, you would be slaving away in the fluorescent loneliness of your office, putting in time to avoid returning to your empty, clothing-strewn apartment.
Baptist argues that the main driving reason was an economic one: slavery had to keep expanding to remain profitable, and Southern politicians wanted to ensure that new western states would be slave-owning ones.
Verda Mae served a lot of defrosted meat pies, and she liked to say at dinner that she'd been slaving over a can opener for five minutes.
If there are layoffs in a year, they wondered, is it really possible that the lawyers who'd been defending trees in British Columbia wouldn't be disadvantaged, compared with the lawyers who'd been slaving away on contracts in Midtown?
Back then, we weren't taught any black history – we knew we'd been slaves, but there was no information about the struggles we had faced to get our freedom.
