Slavery, Reconstruction and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

The Civil War was fought to keep the United States together as a single nation. While the Declaration of Independence asserted that it was "selfevident" that "all men were created equal," the subsequent formulation of the United States Constitution stipulated that slavery would remain legal. Because of the plantation system, the Southern states' economic livelihood depended on having a labor force which it could deny any legal, social or human rights. In the decades before the Civil War, the United States was held together through a series of compromises (The Missouri Compromise (1820), The Fugitive Slave Act, Compromise of 1850, The Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)) that attempted to balance the political power of slave and free states. One of the most blatant statements of deprivation of Blacks' basic rights of citizenship and the attendant human rights was the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision of 1857, which stated...