How the Constitution Led to the Failure of a Union
Although the Constitution was meant to unite the country and ensure that every man would have equal rights, it did in fact lead to a time of instability and the failure of the union. Politically, the Constitution failed to determine whether or not slavery should legal or illegal. Economically, the Constitution did not recognize, if it were legal, where slavery would exist and because the South needed slavery for their economy to survive, the South was dominated by slavery and agriculture while the North was focused on industrialization. Finally, in a social sense, the Constitution lead to the failure of the Union by Congress passing the Fugitive Slave Law, which made kidnapping and slave-catching legal. Thus to a larger extent, even though the Constitution was meant to keep the country united as one, it ultimately lead to sectional tension and division of the country into two clearly opposed sides. Generally speaking, the Constitution is the basis and foundation of the United States, however, in it there is no clear indication of the legality of slavery, which caused tension between the North and South and led to disunity and eventually, the Civil war. In the Constitution, the words slave and slavery cannot be found. Therefore, it was unclear to the people at that time as to whether or not that the Constitution intended to protect the slave system. Because slavery was allowed and continued even though it was never addressed in the Constitution, it was assumed that the slaves were left unprotected by the government and that upset the North as they began to feel as though they could not support the Constitution if it allowed slavery to continue. Although it was never determined, the people, particularly Southerners, took it upon themselves to assume that since it was unclear, they were to decide the fate of slavery with popular sovereignty. The Compromise of 1850 broke apart the Nebraska and Kansas territory into two separate territories. The Kansas territory was