What was fear of the slave power

Just 16 months after taking office, according to Dye, the Slave Power used arsenic to murder the president. In , Dye claimed, agents of the Slave Power derailed Franklin Pierce's railroad car while the president-elect was on the way to the presidential inauguration. The New Hampshire Democrat and his wife escaped injury, but their year-old son was killed. In the future, Pierce toed the Southern line. Dye charged that southern agents sprinkled arsenic on the lump sugar used by Northerners to sweeten their tea.

Because Southerners drank coffee and used granulated sugar, no Southerners were injured. But, according to Dye, 60 Northerners were poisoned, including the president, and 38 died. In fact, no credible evidence supports any of John Smith Dye's sensational allegations.

Historians have uncovered no connection between John C. Calhoun and the assassination attempt on Andrew Jackson. Nor have researchers found any proof that Harrison's and Taylor's deaths resulted from poison. A postmortem examination of Taylor's remains found no evidence of arsenic.

There is no evidence that Southern agents derailed Pierce's train; nor is there any evidence that 60 Northerners were poisoned at the dinner for President-elect Buchanan.

Yet even if his charges were baseless, Dye was not alone in interpreting events in conspiratorial terms. His book was only one of the most extreme examples of conspiratorial charges that had been made by abolitionists since the late s.

By the s, a growing number of Northerners had come to believe that an aggressive Southern slave power had seized control of the federal government and threatened to subvert republican ideals of liberty, equality, and self-rule. The slave trade was banned in the United States after January 1, Slave ownership was still legal, but no more African slaves could be brought into the country. Until that time slave traders had become very wealthy by transporting slaves.

He owned 1, slaves and controlled six large plantations. Another was Stephen Duncan. He was the wealthiest cotton planter before the Civil War. Over his lifetime he owned more than 2, slaves.

He owned 15 plantations, the largest one used slaves. The Fugitive Slave Act of was a large political concession given to the South. It created a new commission that acted similar to the United States Marshals Service but with several differences.

They were paid a reward by the federal government for each slave or those who were claimed to be slaves that was captured.

They quickly became the largest federal employer at the time. The new act was anything but pro- States' rights as Northern state laws were ignored. There was no due process of law. In short, the Fugitive Slave act gave Southern states the power over the laws of Northern states by using the federal government to do their bidding. Most Antebellum Period presidents were not only from the South, but also owned slaves themselves.

Many figured prominently in maintaining the economics of slavery. One reason for so many Southern presidents is that they benefited from the electoral college advantage they held, especially those from the largest slaveholding state, Virginia. One of the key reasons Washington, D. New York City was in a free state and in Philadelphia a slave could only be kept for six months before being freed. This was inconvenient for slave owning politicians.

Also, Washington D.