Chapter 19 Notes
Driving Toward Disunion
1854-1861
Uncle Tom’s Cabin…Again
What does it say about 19th Century
American Culture that Stowe’s appeal to
sentiment succeeded so much more
dramatically in exciting antislavery
passions than did the factual and moral
arguments of many other (mostly male)
abolitionists?
Five generation slave family, Beaufort, S.C by T.H. O'Sullivan, 1862
This photograph of five generations of a slave family, taken in Beaufort, South
Carolina, in 1862, is silent but powerful testimony to the importance that enslaved
African Americans placed on their ever-threatened family ties. (Library of Congress)
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
African American Family Group, Virginia, 1861–1862
This photograph was taken by Larkin J. Mead, an antislavery advocate from New
England, who went south to assist the slaves after the outbreak of the Civil War.
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
(Library of Congress)
Bleeding Kansas
A test of Popular Sovereignty
Some newcomers were actually paid by
northerners to move there (around 2,000)
Some southerners tried to assist small groups

But most didn’t want to bring their valuable property
Missourians came in to vote early and often

Obviously unlawful
Now two governments: Fraudulent and Illegal
Civil War breaks out in 1856
Kansas Statehood
By 1857 Kansas had enough people to apply for
statehood
Lecompton Constitution

Not allowed to vote for it alone
Either with slavery or no slavery
But even if they voted against the constitution provided for slave
owners to be protected
Free Soilers boycotted the polls
Buchanan backed Constitution

This decision divides the democratic party
Douglas did not



Created a compromise that submitted the entire Lecompton
Constitution to a popular vote
Voted down by Free Soilers
Remained a territory until 1861 when secessionist left Congress
Are You Tired of Dred Scott Yet?
Chief Justice Taney from Maryland (Southern)


Could have thrown it out for technical reasons
Wanted to put the question of slavery to rest
Slave Private Property


Therefore could take slaves anywhere
5th Amendment forbids Congress to deprive people of
their property without due process of law
Missouri Compromise Unconstitutional

Congress had no power to ban slavery from
territories, no matter what the legislatures might want
It Leaves the question…
Is this an opinion, not a decision and no
more binding than the views of a “southern
debating society”?
James Buchanan
Buchanan
1791-1868
Fifteenth president of the United States. Born in Pennsylvania of
prosperous Scotch-Irish parents, Buchanan graduated from Dickinson
College and became a highly successful lawyer.
He began his political career as a Federalist, and after serving in the
Pennsylvania legislature, he was elected to Congress in 1820. When the
Federalist party collapsed, he joined the Andrew Jackson bandwagon
and became an important Democratic leader in Congress.
After a brief stint as minister to Russia, he was elected in 1834 to the
Senate, where he served for a decade. Plodding and unimaginative, he
was a loyal party man who strongly sympathized with the South on the
slavery issue.
In 1844 he helped carry Pennsylvania for James K. Polk and was
rewarded by being named secretary of state.
Overriding Buchanan's ingrained caution, Polk assumed the dominant role in
shaping foreign policy, although Buchanan's studious habits and tact made
him a useful subordinate in handling the Texas and Oregon controversies.
He pushed the administration's unsuccessful effort to acquire Cuba, a goal
he reaffirmed in the notorious Ostend Manifesto (1854).
After unsuccessful bids for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1848
and 1852, he accepted an appointment in 1853 as minister to Britain.
Since he was out of the country, he was not associated with the
Kansas-Nebraska Act or the ensuing turmoil in Kansas, a fact that
helped him win the Democratic presidential nomination in 1856. With
strong support from the South, he was elected in November.
Upholding the southern view that a territorial legislature could not
prohibit slavery, he secretly influenced the Supreme Court's
controversial Dred Scott decision by privately pressing a northern
justice to vote with the southern majority against the legality of the
Missouri Compromise.
The onslaught of a depression in the fall of 1857 and his opposition to
northern-sponsored economic legislation further undermined his
administration
His expansionist foreign policy recklessly exacerbated sectional tensions;
and he presided over the most corrupt administration in the nation's history
before the Civil War.
His worst blunder was endorsing Kansas's admission as a slave state
under the Lecompton constitution in violation of his earlier pledge for
a fair vote. Buchanan's course disrupted the Democratic party, badly
weakened it in the free states, and greatly strengthened the sectional
Republican party.
Aided by Buchanan's actions, the Republican party easily triumphed
in 1860.
Buchanan
In the ensuing secession crisis, Buchanan desperately sought to avoid
precipitating a war.
The resignation of a majority of the cabinet and their replacement
by staunch Unionists strengthened Buchanan's resolve, and he
steadfastly refused to recognize the legality of secession or to
surrender remaining federal property in the South.
Eventually the administration worked out informal agreements to
preserve the status quo at Forts Sumter and Pickens, and with a sigh
of relief, he turned the problem over to his successor.
He took no active part in politics during the war and died in 1868.
The last of a series of presidents who dealt ineptly with rising
sectional tensions, Buchanan had neither the vision nor the
talent to defuse the crisis.
Although he was devoted to the Union, his one-sided proSouthern policies were disastrous for the Democratic party and
the nation.
Few presidents have entered office with more experience in public life,
and few have so decisively failed.
Financial Crash of 1857
Causes:

California Gold
Created inflation

Demands of Crimean War
Over-stimulated grain growing



Hurts the Grain Farmers
Land speculation in land and railroads
The North hardest hit
Financial Crash of 1857
Effects:



Over 5,000 Businesses fail within a year
Unemployment and hunger meetings were
widespread “Bread or Death”
Creates a demand for free land
Why pay when treasury has a surplus
Why wouldn’t southerners like this idea?

Creates a demand for higher tariffs
Again, treasury at a surplus while the north suffers; raising
the extremely low tariffs could help

Gives the South a fatal delusion of being stronger
than the north
Brings Southerners closer to war
JOHN BROWN
John Brown….
“This is a beautiful country”
Murderer, Psychopath and Martyr
Hacked up five men thought to be
proslavery
Later sentenced to death for killing seven
innocent people while seizing the federal
arsenal in Harpers Ferry
His death actually fueled more supporters
than anything he did alive
Abraham
Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
1809-1865
Sixteenth president of the United States. Lincoln summarized his early life as
"the short and simple annals of the poor." He was born in a Kentucky log cabin, the
son of a typical pioneer family. Never prosperous, the family moved several times,
and he grew up in Kentucky and Indiana.
He later reckoned that his total schooling did not exceed one year, but being
unusually ambitious he pursued self-improvement through reading and longed for a
better life. Lincoln's identification with the Whig party and its program to promote
economic opportunity grew out of his hard lot as a youth.
When he came of age, Lincoln moved to New Salem, Illinois, where he held a
variety of jobs, served in the legislature, and studied law. After receiving his
attorney's license, he moved to the new capital of Springfield. He retired from the
legislature after four terms, served one term in Congress (1847-1849), and then
devoted himself to his legal practice and became an important and prosperous
attorney.
The repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854 rekindled Lincoln's political
ambition. He spoke eloquently against the expansion of slavery in the West,
became a leader of the new Republican party, and gained national attention in
1858 from his debates with Stephen A. Douglas. In 1860, aided by the facts
that he came from a doubtful state, had a reputation as a moderate on the
slavery question, and was acceptable to both the Germans and the nativists,
he won the Republican presidential nomination and was elected.
Lincoln by Alexander Gardner, 1861
When Lincoln became president in
March of 1861, he faced more severe
problems than any predecessor.
Photographer Mathew Brady captured
this image of the solemn president-elect
on February 23, 1861, a few weeks after
the formation of the Confederacy and
shortly before Lincoln's inauguration.
(Library of Congress)
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Collapse of Compromise
Crittenden Amendments to the Constitution



Created to appease the South
Slavery still prohibited north of 36 30 but below the
line will have federal protection in all territories
existing or “hereafter to be required” (Cuba)
Future northern states could come with or without
slavery (popular sovereignty)
Lincoln rejects scheme

Elected on a platform that opposed extension of
slavery
Secession
After Lincoln’s election South Carolina
stayed true to their word and seceded
Buchanan felt it was illegal but saw
nothing in the Constitution that gave him
authority to stop them with guns.
The south thought their departure would
be unopposed

Felt the north were too dependant on
southern cotton and markets to risk anything
What Were They Thinking?
Opportunity to cut apron strings from the North

South could prove they can support themselves
Create own banking, shipping and trade with Europe
Feelings of Nationalism


Distinctive culture
Felt lorded over by hostile northerners
Principles of self determination


It isn’t wrong or immoral
They voluntarily entered the union and should be
allowed to voluntarily leave it
Eventually 11 states secede
Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Davis
1808-1889
Politician and president of the Confederate States of America. Davis
had an impressive political career before he became president of the
Confederacy, but he was appointed, not elected, to many of the offices he
held in his antebellum career.
His limited experience with electoral politics was a handicap to his
presidency, and, perhaps more important, he lacked the personal
qualities that made Abraham Lincoln a successful president.
Raised on the Mississippi frontier, Davis's life was shaped by his brother
Joseph, who was twenty-four years his senior. Joseph Davis made a
fortune as a lawyer and planter, and he played a paternal role in Jefferson's
life for many years.
After Jefferson graduated from West Point and served in the army, Joseph
gave him a plantation and the slaves to farm it. In the 1840s, Joseph
managed the plantation so that Jefferson could go into politics.
Jefferson Davis became a staunch states' rights Democrat and
champion of the unrestricted expansion of slavery into the territories.
Political Life
He was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1845—his only
successful electoral campaign—and then was
appointed to the Senate after he became a hero while
serving in the army during the Mexican War.
In the Senate he opposed the Compromise of 1850,
particularly the admission of California as a free state.
In 1851 he resigned from the Senate to run unsuccessfully
for the Mississippi governorship.
In 1853, President Franklin Pierce appointed Davis
secretary of war.
In 1857 he reentered the Senate, where he continued to
advocate the spread of slavery into the territories.
During the secession crisis, he resigned from the
Senate and in 1861 was chosen by acclamation to be
the Confederate president.
As President of the Confederacy
Davis worked very hard at his presidential duties, concentrating on military
strategy but neglecting domestic politics, which hurt him in the long run.
He could not manage congressional opposition as successfully as Lincoln,
nor could he inspire the southern public as Lincoln did his public in the
North.
Davis was also a poor judge of people, unlike Lincoln.
The Confederate president protected incompetents, such as Braxton Bragg,
and he did not make use of talented men he disliked, such as Joseph E.
Johnston.
In April 1865 the Union armies finally surrounded Richmond, and Davis and his
family fled the city for the Deep South, only to be captured in Georgia in May.
Davis's life after the war was bleak. Charged with treason, he went to prison
in Fort Monroe, Virginia, where he remained for two years.
In prison his physical and emotional health deteriorated, and he was never the
same after he was released in May 1867.
He and his family traveled abroad for two years. When he returned to America, he
had trouble making a living.
He worked for an insurance company in Memphis, but the company went bankrupt,
and when he published a history of the Confederacy, it did not sell well. He lived off
the charity of friends and relatives until his death in New Orleans in 1889. He
refused to take the oath of allegiance to regain his citizenship, which was
restored only posthumously by the U.S. Congress in 1978.
The End!