The Danville Diaries Volume One

The Danville Diaries - A nation dividing and the causes leading to the War for Southern Independence - In the 1850's there were two countries inside the united states fighting for control of the whole federal government, all of the New territories and any new states that would be admitted to the Union. One country was for Free-soil and dogmatically anti-slavery, the other country was pro-slavery and wanted to extend its borders into other areas of the Union. When the 1820 Missouri Compromise was abolished and the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act enacted, both countries felt betrayed by the government and protested with fury and anger. The North wanted to end the spread out into other new areas wherever it would be accepted by popular vote. The argument became so heated that the Northern Republicans and abolitionists engaged in physical violence with the pro-slavery Southerners who committed fraud in the elections for a free-state constitution in the Kansas Territory. A pro-southern constitution favoring and allowing slavery, called the Lecompton Constitution, was backed by President Buchanan and the Southern Democrats. Although the near future brought a reversal in the constitution of Kansas, the conflicts had begun and the nation would not totally recover until some time after the Civil War. Volume One of the Danville Diaries deals with the years 1856 to 1857 leading up to the Civil War and seen through the eyes of Garrett Wright from Danville, Kentucky.