The Free Soil Party
• Free Soilers mostly objected
to slavery on economic grounds
• Angry at silence of both major
parties on slavery issue
• Strange coalition of pro-tariff
industrialists, “Conscience
Whigs, racist northerners,
Democrats angry at Oregon
settlement, and western
farmers.
• Nominated Martin Van Buren
as their presidential candidate
in 1848
Popular Sovereignty
• 1812 veteran
• Democratic candidate
for the presidency in
1848
• Reputed father of
popular sovereignty as
an answer to the
slavery issue.
• Popular sovereignty
defined: let the people
decide
Lewis Cass
President Taylor
Vice-President Fillmore
Problems of Sectional Balance in 1850

California statehood.
 Southern “fire-eaters” threatening
secession.
 Underground RR & fugitive slave issues:
California Statehood?
•What kind of problems
did the gold rush cause
for the California
territory?
•Why was California
statehood controversial?
Texas Secession?
Texas and
the Disputed
Area Before
the
Compromise
of 1850
The Underground Railroad
• Informal network of safe
houses in the North
shuttling runaway slaves to
Canada
• Fewer than 5000 slaves
made it north, roughly
1000 every year.
• Southerners furious that
some northerners refused
to obey Fugitive Slave Laws
• Major source of friction
between North and South.
Harriet Tubman
A Stop on the
Underground
Railroad
Henry Clay Proposing the
Compromise of 1850
John C. Cahounproposed a system
of co-presidents,
one from the North
and one from the
South, each having
veto power. Good
idea?
Daniel Webster’s
“Seventh of March
Speech”
Moves the North to
support compromise,
including a tough new
fugitive slave law.
Abolitionists and FreeSoilers cry “Treason!”.
President Fillmore
The Compromise of 1850:
1. California enters the union as a free
state
2. Texas gives up its claims to N.M.
3. The Slave Trade is banned in D.C.
4. Tough new fugitive slave law
5. Popular sovereignty will decide the
slavery issues in the New Mexico and
Utah territories
Who got the better of this deal?
Compromise of 1850
The Geography of Slavery after the
Compromise of 1850
Protesting the Fugitive Slave Law-1850
1852 Presidential Election
√ Franklin Pierce
Democrat
Gen. Winfield Scott
Whig
John Parker Hale
Free Soil
1852
Election
Results
Expansionist Young America in the 1850s
America’s Attempted Raids into Latin America
Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854
“Bleeding Kansas”
Border “Ruffians”
(pro-slavery
Missourians)
“The Crime Against Kansas”-1856
Sen. Charles Sumner
(R-MA)
Congr. Preston Brooks
(D-SC)
John Brown: Madman or Hero
Pottawatomie Creek MassacreMay 1856
Harriet
Beecher
Stowe
1811 - 1896
So this is the lady who
started the Civil War.
-- Abraham Lincoln
Uncle Tom’s
Cabin
1852
 Sold 300,000 copies in
the first year.
 2 million in a decade!
Birth of the Republican Party, 1854
 Northern Whigs.
 Northern Democrats.
 Free-Soilers.
 Know-Nothings.
 Other miscellaneous opponents
of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
1856 Presidential Election
√ James Buchanan
Democrat
John C. Frémont
Republican
Millard Fillmore
Whig-American
1856
Election
Results
Dred Scott v. Sanford, 1857
What were the facts of the
case?
• Dred Scott lived with
his master for 5 years
in Illinois and Wisconsin
• Backed by abolitionists,
he sued in federal court
on the basis that he had
lived in free territory
and therefore was free.
Dred Scott v. Sanford, 1857
The Supreme Court’s Decision:
• Dred Scott was a slave and
could not sue in federal court
• Slaves cannot taken away
from their masters without
due process of law
• The Missouri Compromise is
unconstitutional. Slavery is
legal everywhere.
Chief Justice Roger B. Taney
What caused the Panic of 1857??
• Influx of California
gold caused inflation
• Overproduction of
grain to feed
Europeans during
Crimean War
• Overspeculation on
land and railroads.
Impact of the Panic of 1857??
• Industrial north hardest
hit. Widespread
unemployment
• South’s cotton crop not
really affected. This gave
them a false sense of
confidence that they
didn’t need the North to
survive economically.
• Westerners demanded
free land out west.
Speculation not working.
Southerners opposed this.
Why?
The Lincoln-Douglas (Illinois Senate)
Debates, 1858
A House divided against
itself, cannot stand.
Stephen Douglas & the
Freeport Doctrine
Popular
Sovereignty?
John Brown’s Raid
on Harper’s Ferry, 1859
√ Abraham Lincoln
Republican
John Bell
Constitutional Union
1860
Presidential
Election
Stephen A. Douglas
Northern Democrat
John C. Breckinridge
Southern Democrat
Republican Party Platform in 1860
1. Non-extension of slavery [for the Free-Soilers].
2. Protective tariff [for the No. Industrialists].
3. No abridgment of rights for immigrants [a
disappointment for the “Know-Nothings”].
4. Government aid to build a Pacific RR [for the
Northwest].
5. Internal improvements [for the West] at federal expense.
6. Free homesteads for the public domain [for farmers].
1860 Election: A Nation Coming Apart?!
1860
Election
Results
Crittenden Compromise:
A Last Ditch Appeal to Sanity
Senator John J. Crittenden
Democrat-(KY)
Crittenden Amend.
• Slavery protected in all
territories below 36’30”
line
• No slavery above 36’30”
line
• States below 36’30” line
can choose to come into
the union slave or free
Secession!: SC Dec. 20, 1860
Fort Sumter: April 12, 1861