Renewing the Sectional
Struggle
Chapter 18 APUSH
The Popular Sovereignty Panacea
1848
• Post Mexican War & Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo
– Northern anti-slavery advocates backed Wilmot
Proviso
– South worried about slavery in western areas
– Whig and Democratic Parties split along
North/South line
Free Soil Party
Free Soil!
Free Speech!
Free Labor!
Free Men!
 Industrialists who wanted higher protective tariffs
 “Barnburners” – discontented northern Democrats.
 Anti-slavery members of the Liberty and Whig
Parties.
 Opposition to the extension of slavery in the new
territories! (Supported Wilmot Proviso)
WHY?
The 1848 Presidential Election Results
√
Hero of Buena Vista
Father of “popular sovereignty”
Free Soil
GOLD! At Sutter’s Mill, 1848
John A. Sutter
California Gold Rush, 1849
49ers
California Gold Fever
• Huge numbers of people flocking to California
caused problems
– Increase in crime
– When the territorial government failed to
protect its citizens, people turned to
vigilante justice
• Behind the scenes, President Taylor
encourages California to draft a Constitution
that excludes slavery and then apply for
admission to the U.S. as a state
Sectional Balance
and the
Underground Railroad
Problems of Sectional Balance
in 1850
ß California statehood.
ß Southern “fire-eaters” threatening
secession.
ß Underground RR & fugitive slave issues:
 Personal liberty laws
South in 1850
SOUTH HAPPY
•Zachary Taylor as president
•Majority on Supreme Court
•Outnumbered in the House
•Equal in the Senate
•Cotton expanding- profits high
BUT SAD BECAUSE…
•15 free and 15 slave states
•California admission is a problem
•New Mexico and Utah want admission as free state
•Texas claims part of New Mexico
•Northerners want to end slavery in Washington DC
•Runaway slaves assisted by Underground RR
Impact of the Underground
Railroad
• Harriet Tubman- rescues over 300
slaves
• In 1850, the South was losing roughly
1,000 slaves per year through the
Underground Railroad and runaways
• Led the South to push for a new, and
harsher Fugitive Slave Law
– Northerners refusing to follow the
Constitution and the Fugitive Slave Act of
1793
Twilight of the Senatorial Giants
• Clay’s last great compromise. Urged both
Henry Clay
sides to make concessions, and the North allow a
tougher fugitive-slave law Aided by Senator
Stephen A. Douglas (Illinois)
• John C. Calhoun’s championed the South in his
last great speech (two Presidents, each with a
John C Calhoun veto, approved of Clay’s purpose, but said they
did not provide enough safeguards for the rights
of Southern states.
Daniel Webster
•Uphold Clay’s measures - urged concessions
like the Fugitive Slave Law. Why worry because
the good Lord had decreed through geography
and climate that slavery won’t last in new
Mexican territories (bankers of North liked this as
they won’t lose investments in South)
• Webster’s Seventh of March Speech
turned the tide in the North toward
compromise.
Twilight of the Senatorial Giants
Daniel Webster
Slavery is evil but disunion is a
worse evil.
He despised abolitionists and
never joined their ranks
Deadlock and Danger on Capitol
Hill
Young Guard of North speaks in the Senate- more
interested in purging and purifying the nation than
patching it up and preserving it
•William Seward - strongly antislavery - appeal
to a “higher law” than the Constitution
Zachary Taylor
President
I’m with Seward I’m vetoing any
Compromise!
Compromise of 1850 (over the land acquired
•
•
•
•
•
specifically from the Mexican War).
Texas would relinquish the land in dispute but, in
compensation, be given 10 million dollars -- money it would use
to pay off its debt to Mexico.
The territories of New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah
would be organized without mention of slavery. (The decision
would be made by the territories' inhabitants later, when they
applied for statehood.)
Regarding Washington, the slave trade would be abolished in
the District of Columbia, although slavery would still be
permitted.
Finally, California would be admitted as a free state.
To pacify slave-state politicians, who would have objected to
the imbalance created by adding another free state, the
Fugitive Slave Act was passed.
Luckily….
• Taylor dies
• Millard Fillmore (lawyer from NY)
takes over
Millard Fillmore
• Fillmore, president
due to Zachary
Taylor’s death,
supported the
Compromise of 1850
and saw it as the
“final settlement” of
the question of
slavery
Compromise of 1850
What are the concessions to both sides?
Temporary Peace
• Who got the best deal?
• Fugitive Slave Law
FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT
• the Fugitive Slave Act was the most controversial part
of the Compromise of 1850
• It required citizens to assist in the recovery of fugitive
slaves.
• It denied a fugitive's right to a jury trial. (Cases would
instead be handled by special commisioners -commisioners who would be paid $5 if an alleged
fugitive were released and $10 if he or she were sent
away with the claimant.)
• The act called for changes in filing for a claim, making
the process easier for slaveowners.
• Also, according to the act, there would be more
federal officials responsible for enforcing the law.
Effects of Fugitive Slave Act
• For slaves attempting to build lives in the North, the new law
was disaster.
– Many left their homes and fled to Canada.
– During the next ten years, an estimated 20,000 blacks
moved to the neighboring country.
– For Harriet Jacobs, a fugitive living in New York, passage of
the law was "the beginning of a reign of terror to the colored
population." She stayed put, even after learning that slave
catchers were hired to track her down.
– Anthony Burns, a fugitive living in Boston, was one of many
who were captured and returned to slavery.
– Free blacks, too, were captured and sent to the South. With
no legal right to plead their cases, they were completely
defenseless.
FURTHER EFFECTS. . .
• Passage of the Fugitive Slave Act made
abolitionists all the more resolved to put an
end to slavery.
• The Underground Railroad became more
active, reaching its peak between 1850 and
1860.
• The act also brought the subject of slavery
before the nation.
– Many who had previously been ambivalent
about slavery now took a definitive stance
against the institution.
Was the Compromise a
success?
• The Compromise of 1850 accomplished what
it set out to do -- it kept the nation united -but the solution was only temporary. Over the
following decade the country's citizens
became further divided over the issue of
slavery. The rift would continue to grow until
the nation itself divided.
Why Not Begin The Civil War
in the 1850s?
• South - happy to since Northerners not
following laws (Fugitive) and promises
• North - time to expand and create more
wealth and population
• Time for moral strength of the North to
build
Defeat and Doom for the Whigs
UPCOMING ELECTION OF 1852
• Democrats - Franklin Pierce- enemyless, inconspicuous, proSouthern northerner. Endorsed Compromise 1850 and Fugitive
Slave Law
• Whigs - didn’t pick Webster or Fillmore. Instead went with
military guy- Gen Winfield Scott. OK with Compromise of 1850
• Whigs split and begin to die in this election.
• End of national parties and rise of purely
sectional parties.
• RIP Whig Party - kept Union together
through electoral strength in South and
through leaders like Webster and Clay
• Henry Clay and Daniel Webster both die
during the 1852 campaign.
1852 Presidential Election
√ Franklin Pierce
Democrat
Gen. Winfield Scott
John Parker Hale
Whig
Free Soil
1852
Election
Results
Franklin Pierce
Manifest Destiny
• Nicaragua - William Walker
• British challenged Monroe
Doctrine
Expansionist Young America in the
1850s
American influence in Latin America in the 1840s and
1850s
American Influence in Latin
America
• Treaty between the U.S. and New Granada
(Colombia) in 1848- Americans get the right to transit
across the isthmus of Panama in return for
maintaining the neutrality of the route.
• 1855- first “transcontinental railroad” completed
• Clayton-Bulwer Treaty- U.S. and Britain agree that
neither country would fortify or seek control over any
future waterway
• William Walker tries to gain control of Nicaragua, but
the countries of Central America ally together to
overthrow him, and he dies before a firing squad
CUBA Sugar mills
Ostend Manifesto - $120 million offered and
if Spain refuses then US would be justified in
taking Cuba (Monroe Doctrine)
Northern free soilers furious
Pierce recalls the Ostend
Manifesto
Spreading American influence
in Asia
• Treaty of Wanghia- U.S. and China
– “Most favored nation” status- U.S. gets all
trading terms given to other powers
– “Extraterritoriality”- Americans accused of
crimes in China to be tried by American
officials, not Chinese courts
– Secured by Caleb Cushing
– Trade with China greatly increases, and
new opportunities for missionaries
Japan
• Japan had been largely insulated from the outside
world
• July 1853- Commodore Matthew Perry sails into Edo
(Tokyo) Bay
– Promises to return in one year to get Chinese
reply to request for free trade and friendly relations
• Returns in February 1854 with more ships, gives the
Japanese gifts
• Treaty of Kanagawa signed on March 31, 1854
– Proper treatment of shipwrecked sailors
– American coaling rights in Japan
– Establishment of consular (diplomatic) relations
• May have only been a foot in the door, but it blasts
Japanese isolation wide open
Pacific Railroad and Gadsden
Purchase
• Transportation problems after
Mexican War
• California and Oregon isolated
• RR promoters - where run the line?
Where end it? Run it south of
Mexican border?
• Gadsden Purchase 1853
• Where will that RR go?
• Northerners argue that if running the
railroad through organized territory is
the argument, why not organize
Nebraska?
Douglas and KansasNebraska
• Slice Territory of Nebraska into two territories,
Kansas and Nebraska
• Decision on slavery by popular sovereignty
(assumption is that Kansas would become slave and
Nebraska free
• Doing this would require overturning the Missouri
Compromise
• Why do this? Personal gain for Douglas, angling for
the presidency in 1856?
• Douglas fails to see that hundreds of thousands of
northerners are going to detest Douglas’ position on
what they consider a moral issue.
Kansas-Nebraska Act
• Repeals the Missouri Compromise, and
indirectly the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850
• Will shatter the Democrats
• Leads to the emergence of the Republican
Party
– Dissatisfied Whigs, Democrats who
opposed Kansas-Nebraska, Free-Soilers,
Know-Nothings
• SECTIONAL PARTIES HAVE EMERGED