The Crisis of Union
Road to Crisis
• Missouri Compromise or
Compromise of 1820
• Westward expansion
• The Gag Order
• Abolition movement
Conscience Whigs
• Whigs who broke party line and viewed
the Mexican War as a Southern
conspiracy to add new slave states in the
West
• Leaders were Charles Francis Adams and
Joshua Giddings
Wilmot Proviso
• David Wilmot, a Democrat Congressman
from Pennsylvania proposed a proviso that
would limit the gains the South would reap
from the war
• Prohibit slavery in any of the new territory
gained from Mexico.
• Passed the House, but the Senate voted it
down
Southern Position
• Any attempt to restrict the expansion of
slavery was unconstitutional
• Hated Abolitionist and Free Soilers
• Moderate Southerners wanted to extend
the Missouri Compromise line to the
Pacific
Popular Sovereignty
•
•
•
•
Lewis Cass – Michigan
Let the people decide slavery issue
Squatter rights
Adopted by many of the Western
Democrats.
Slavery Conspiracy
• Slave Power" had:
– entrenched slavery in the Constitution;
– caused financial panics to sabotage the
Northern economy;
– dispossessed Indians from their native lands;
and
– fomented revolution in Texas and war with
Mexico in order to expand the South's slave
empire.
Political Disunion
• During the 1850s, the American political system
incapable of containing the sectional disputes
between the North and South
• One major political party--the Whigs--collapsed.
• Another--the Democrats--split into Northern and
Southern factions.
• With the breakdown of the party system, the
issues raised by slavery exploded.
• The bonds that had bound the country for more
than seven decades began to unravel.
Slavery’s Future?
• Some white Southerners called for the
reopening of the African slave trade.
• These people believed that nonslaveholding Southerners would only
support slavery if they believed they had a
chance of owning slaves themselves.
• Most Southern leaders, the best way to
demonstrate slavery's viability was through
westward expansion.
Compromise of 1850
• admitted California as a free state;
• allowed the territorial legislatures of New Mexico
and Utah to settle the question of slavery in
those areas;
• set up a stringent federal law for the return of
runaway slaves;
• abolished the slave trade in the District of
Columbia; and
• gave Texas $10 million to abandon its claims to
territory in New Mexico east of the Rio Grande.
• Bought time for the Union
Ostend Manifesto
• Southern slave owners had a special interest in
Spanish-held Cuba.
• Thought Manifest Destiny should be extended to
Cuba.
• In 1854 three American diplomats, Pierre Soulé
(minister to Spain), James Buchannan (minister to
Britain), and John Y. Mason (minister to France) met
in Ostend, Belgium.
• Issued a warning to Spain that it must sell Cuba to
the United States or risk having it taken by force.
• Not authorized by President Pierce administration
The Knights of the Golden Circle
• The Knights of the Golden Circle was a secret
antebellum organization that sought to establish
a slave empire encompassing the southern
United States, the West Indies, Mexico, and part
of Central America
• Knights hoped to control the commerce of the
area and have a virtual monopoly on the world's
supply of tobacco, sugar, and perhaps rice and
coffee
Resistance to the Fugitive Slave
Act
• Federal judges and special commissioners
would decide the status of African
Americans in the North
• Denied Constitutional rights of trials
• Violence breaks out in the North protecting
free African Americans
• Popular movements in the North helped to
make enforcement of the law moot.
Literature on Slavery
• Pro : George Fitzhugh’s Sociology for the
South and Cannibals All!
• Con: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Impending
Crisis of the South
– Hinton R. Helper (a racist) Slavery has a
negative impact on the Southern economy
Kansas Nebraska Act
• Stephen Douglas's bill created two
territories, Kansas and Nebraska, and
declared that the Missouri Compromise
was "inoperative and void."
• With solid support from Southern Whigs
and Southern Democrats and the votes of
half of the Northern Democratic members
of Congress, the measure passed.
Kansas Nebraska Act
• Douglas had long insisted that the
democratic solution to the slavery issue
was to allow the people who actually
settled a territory to decide whether
slavery would be permitted or forbidden.
• Popular sovereignty, he believed, would
allow the nation to "avoid the slavery
agitation for all time to come."
New Political Parties
• Republican Party - A combination of
antislavery radicals, old-line Whigs, former
Jacksonian Democrats, and antislavery
immigrants, the Republican Party was
committed to barring slavery from the
western territories
• Know Nothing Party (American Party) –
Anti-immigrant , anti-Catholic political party
Election of 1856
Bloody Kansas
• Since Nebraska was too far north to attract slave
owners, Kansas became the arena of sectional
conflict.
• For six years, proslavery and antislavery
factions fought in Kansas as popular sovereignty
degenerated into violence.
• Two state constitutions passed. One declared
Kansas slave territory (Lecompton Constitution),
while the other supported freemen (Topeka)
Bloody Kansas
• On May 21, 1856, 800 proslavery men,
many from Missouri, marched into
Lawrence, Kansas, to arrest the leaders of
the antislavery government.
• The posse burned the local hotel, looted a
number of houses, destroyed two
antislavery printing presses, and killed one
man
The Attack on Senator Sumner
• Sumner accused Senator Butler of taking "the
harlot, Slavery," for his "mistress" and proceeded
to make fun of a medical disorder from which
Senator Butler suffered
• Two days later, Senator Butler's nephew,
Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina,
entered a nearly empty Senate chamber.
• Sighting Sumner at his desk, He swung so hard
that the cane broke into pieces.
• Brooks caned Sumner, rather than challenging
him to a duel, because he regarded the Senator
as his social inferior.
The Attack on Senator Sumner
• Brooks then quietly left
the Senate chamber,
leaving Sumner "as
senseless as a corpse for
several minutes, his head
bleeding copiously from
the frightful wounds, and
the blood saturating his
clothes.“
• It took Sumner three
years to recover from his
injuries and return to his
Senate seat.
John Brown
• John Brown, a devoted Bible-quoting Calvinist
who believed he had a personal duty to
overthrow slavery, announced that the time had
come "to fight fire with fire" and "strike terror in
the hearts of proslavery men.
• The next day, in reprisal for the "sack of
Lawrence" and the assault on Sumner, Brown
and six companions dragged five proslavery
men and boys from their beds at Pottawatomie
Creek, split open their skulls with a sword and
cut off their hands
John Brown
• A war of revenge
erupted in Kansas.
• Before it was over,
guerilla warfare in
eastern Kansas left
200 dead.
Scott v. Sanford (1857)
• In 1846, a Missouri slave, Dred Scott, sued for
his freedom.
• Scott argued that while he had been the slave
of an army surgeon, he had lived for four years
in Illinois, a free state, and Wisconsin, a free
territory, and that his residence on free soil had
erased his slave status.
• In 1850 a Missouri court gave Scott his freedom,
but two years later, the Missouri Supreme Court
reversed this decision and returned Scott to
slavery.
• Scott then appealed to the federal courts.
The Dred Scott Decision
• In March 1857, Chief
Justice Roger B. Taney
announced the Court's
decision. By a 7-2
margin, the Court ruled
that Dred Scott had no
right to sue in federal
court, that the Missouri
Compromise was
unconstitutional, and that
Congress had no right to
exclude slavery from the
territories.
• The South rejoices
Lincoln Douglas Debates
• The 1858 Senate campaign pitted a little-known
lawyer from Springfield named Abraham Lincoln
against Senator Stephen A. Douglas, the front
runner for the Democratic presidential
nomination in 1860.
• Lincoln accepted the Republican nomination
with the famous words: "'A house divided against
itself cannot stand.' I believe this Government
cannot endure permanently half-slave and halffree."
Lincoln Douglas Debates
• For four months Lincoln and Douglas
crisscrossed Illinois, traveling nearly
10,000 miles and participating in seven
face-to-face debates before crowds of up
to 15,000.
• Lincoln insisted that black Americans were
equal to Douglas and "every living man" in
their right to life, liberty, and the fruits of
their own labor.
Lincoln Douglas Debate
• Lincoln outdebates
Douglas and
maneuvers him to
make some anti
slavery statements
• Lincoln loses the
election but becomes
a national player.
The Raid on Harpers Ferry
• Brown's plan was to capture the federal arsenal
at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia),
and arm slaves from the surrounding
countryside.
• His long-range goal was to drive southward into
Tennessee and Alabama, raiding federal
arsenals and inciting slave insurrections.
• Failing that, he hoped to ignite a sectional crisis
that would destroy slavery.
The Raid on Harpers Ferry
• At 8 o'clock Sunday evening, October 16, John
Brown led a raiding party of approximately 21
men toward Harpers Ferry, where they captured
the lone night watchman and cut the town's
telegraph lines.
• Encountering no resistance, Brown's raiders
seized the federal arsenal, an armory, and a rifle
works along with several million dollars worth of
arms and munitions.
• Brown then sent out several detachments to
round up hostages and liberate slaves.
The Raid on Harpers Ferry
• John Brown's assault against slavery
lasted less than two days.
• Five of Brown's party escaped, ten were
killed, and seven, including Brown himself,
were taken prisoner.
• He was found guilty of treason,
conspiracy, and murder, and was
sentenced to die on the gallows.
The Raid on Harpers Ferry
• I...am now quite certain
that the crimes of this
guilty land will never be
purged away but with
blood."
• After Harpers Ferry,
Southerners increasingly
believed that secession
and creation of a
slaveholding confederacy
were now the South's
only options.
Election of 1860
• Northern Democrats selected Stephen Douglas
as their candidate.
• Southern Democrats choose John C.
Breckinridge as their nominee.
• Constitutional Union Party, which consisted of
conservative former Whigs, Know Nothings, and
pro-Union Democrats nominated John Bell of
Tennessee for President.
• the Republican Party nominated Abraham
Lincoln
Election of 1860
• Lincoln's name did
not appear on the
ballot in 10 states.
• Lincoln won only 39.9
percent of the popular
vote, but received 180
Electoral College
votes, 57 more than
the combined total of
his opponents.