Northerners believed that the "Slave Power" had infiltrated the federal government and was having an undue influence on policies. Southerners, on the...

The Compromise of 1850
convinced many northerners that the government was in the hands of the "slave power."
This act was intended to deal with the territories that came into the Union as a result of the
Mexican War. In addition to other provisions, such as making California a free state and
outlawing the slave trade in Washington, D.C. (intended to placate the North), the Compromise of
1850 brought back a stronger fugitive slave law. This law provided for the recapture of slaves
who had escaped northward, and it was hated by Northerners. It made them feel complicit in
recapturing escaped slaves, whom many felt should be allowed their freedom in the North.
Northern abolitionists also disagreed with the 1857 Supreme Court case Dred Scott v.
Sanford, which declared that slaves were property and could not sue for their
freedom. This case made many northerners feel that a slave power had taken over the federal
government.

The Southerners, for their part, were angered by Harriet Beecher
Stowe's book Uncle Tom's Cabin, which they felt provided in inaccurate
picture of slavery as degrading and cruel. In addition, they were alarmed by John Brown's raid
on a federal arsenal in Virginia in 1859. They feared that the raid carried out by Brown, who
wanted to arm slaves for an insurrection, was a sign that the North was supporting wide-scale
slave revolts.