Elephant in the Room

This unit was about a big problem back in the 19th century, and that was slavery.  The essential question of the unit was, "How do we know the debate over slavery was the 'elephant in the room' for American politics in the early 19th century?"  To answer this question we got into groups in class and made a timeline using the TWL app on the iPad. This is a picture of our project:
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We looked at 8 different events and we organized them into two categories.  On the top of the line it was events that went in favor of the Anti-Slavery group, while the bottom was for events that went in favor of the Pro-Slavery group.

Using the time line and these events, we can clearly see that slavery was in fact, the 'Elephant in the room'.  First of all, the Kansas-Nebraska act was a big controversy because it violated the Missouri Compromise.  It did go in favor of both groups, it would help Chicago's economy and tourism, but more importantly it would allow Anti-Slavery settlers to move west.  However it would also allow the Pro-Slavery group to expand northwards, past the Missouri line.  This was just one of the big events in politics, and it led to an even bigger one.  In 1856, Charles Sumner was reciting his speech and he was calling out Senator Douglas and Senator Butler for creating the Kansas-Nebraska Act.  Butler's cousin, Preston Brooks took great offense at Sumner's speech and he went up on the stage and beat Sumner with a cane.  He almost killed Sumner by beating him and this led to a lot of talk about slavery and its expansion.  This wordle of Sumner's speech shows what his main topics were.
 http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/1440275/The_Crima_Against_Kansas/
 This further proves how slavery was the 'elephant in the room.  This next event that happened 1857, was possibly one of the most controversial rulings by the Supreme Court.  The Dred Scott decision was the decision to deny Scott freedom after he had been living in a free state for years.  They ruled that he was still the property of  his owner.  The fact that the Supreme Court ruling was 7-2 helps show that in politics there was still a lot of debate on slavery.  Finally, the last example of how slavery was the 'elephant in the room' of politics is the Lincoln-Douglas debate.  Lincoln and Douglas had a series of 7 debates all about slavery.  Lincoln was anti-slavery and even though he lost the election, he still got a lot more followers for the anti-slavery campaign.  These four events, and more, all prove how the topic of slavery was the 'elephant in the room' for politics in the early 19th century.