Sectional Division Lecture 1848-1861
I.
Ramifications from Mexican War & Election of 1848
a. Election of 1848 saw the conflict over expansion of slavery as #1 issue
i. General Zachary Taylor (Whigs) vs. Lewis Cass (Demo) vs. Martin Van Buren (Free Soil
Party)
b. Gold Rush and CA Admission to Union
i. John Sutter discovers gold at his mill in CA in January 1848
II.
Possible Solutions to Sectional Crisis
a. Extension of Missouri Compromise Line—36 30’
b. Popular Sovereignty—program of Cass but championed by Stephen Douglas
c. Adoption of Wilmont Proviso—anti-slavery formula—no slavery at all
d. Protection of slavery in all territories—only stop slavery when states apply for admission
III.
Compromise Reached to avert Session
a. Nashville Convention (Summer of 1850)
i. Threatened the secession of South unless slavery was protected in the territories at the
suggestion of the Miss. Legislature
b. Compromise of 1850 (Clay—“Great Compromiser” orchestrates again)
i. CA enters as Free St
ii. Popular Sovereignty in NM and Utah Territories
iii. Slave Trade in Wash DC abolished
iv. Fugitive Slave Act (revised and strengthened)
IV.
Election of 1852 and Election of 1856—Show Sectionalism
a. 1852—Franklin Pierce (Demo) vs. Winfield Scott (Whig)
b. 1856—James Buchanan (Demo) vs. John C. Fremont (Republican)
c. “Know-Nothings” Arrive
i. “Nativism” becomes an open political movement
V.
Gadsden Purchase (1853) & Ostend Manifesto (1854)
a. 1853—Gadsden (Southern Senator) wants to buy 30,000 sq miles for a Southern transcontinental
RR (competed in 1882 from Houston to LA)
b. 1854—Message sent to President Pierce re: seizing Cuba by any means (purchase or military).
Northerners upset at Southern “Slave Conspiracy”
VI.
Popular Sovereignty, Kansas-Nebraska Act & “Bleeding Kansas” & Senator Stephen Douglas
i. Popular Sovereignty would be the device used to determine Slave issue in these new
areas/states
ii. “Bleeding Kansas”
1. Lecompton Legislature
VII.
Supreme Court Cases on Slavery
a. Ableman v. Booth (1857-59)—Wisconsin SC
b. Dred Scott v. Sanford (1856)—
i. The Situation
ii. The SC Decision
iii. The Significance
VIII.
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
a. Freeport, Illinois (most famous)—Douglas states “the Freeport Doctrine”
i. Reformulate the definition of popular sovereignty
1. Settlers could exclude slavery from a territory simply by not adopting local
legislation that protects it.
2. Even if territorial gvts prohibit slavery, as Taney said in Dred, locals could still do
as they pleased by refusing to support slavery.
b. Lincoln’s belief that “A house divided cannot stand”
i. “I believe this gvt cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the
Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to
be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.”
ii. Questioned innate abilities of African-Americans
iii. Rejected proposals that would give blacks social and political equality
iv. Blacks were entitled to “all the natural rights enumerated in the Dec of Indep.”
IX.
John Brown and Harpers Ferry (Oct 1859)
a. Brown + 18 mixed race, armed men go to a federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in Virginia
b. The Result
i. He and the others crushed by Colonel Robert E. Lee
ii. Captured Brown and killed another 10
iii. Brown hanged for treason
c. Why?—want to get the guns, etc…to arm slaves to revolt for freedom. Do so for religious
reasons
d. Significance—Brown becomes a Christian martyr for Abolitionist cause.
i. Emerson wrote, Brown would “make the gallows as glorious as the cross.”
X.
Election of 1860
a. Abraham Lincoln (Republican) vs. Stephen Douglas (Demo) vs. John Breckinridge (Demo) vs.
John Bell (Constitutional Union—compromise party)
i. 2 Democrats since the Democratic Convention could not decide on the Slave issue and
what to do (8 states actually walk out of the convention)
ii. Lincoln gets only 40% of the vote but 180 electoral votes by winning every Northern and
Western state except NJ
b. Lincoln and the Republican’s Platform
i. Did not want to end slavery but did not want it to expand any further and thought it
would eventually have to disappear
ii. Lincoln attack slavery as an institution that subverted equality of opportunity
XI.
Session Crisis and the Beginning of the Civil War
a. South Carolina threatens to secede if Lincoln won and he did. 4 days after Lincoln’s
victory…hold convention and vote to secede
b. Next six weeks see another 6 states leave the Union. 4 More leave later for 11 states in secession
c. Jefferson Davis elected president of the Confederation and Richmond Virginia is capital
d. Lincoln inaugurated with the “lame duck” Congress on March 4, 1861 with a divided Union
e. Final Attempt at Compromise
i. Crittenden Amendments
1. Slavery was prohibited in the territories North of the 36 30 line. After statehood,
they could be slave according popular sovereignty
2. South of that line it was to be given federal protection in all territories existing ore
“hereafter to be acquired” (like Cuba) Once statehood, popular sovereignty
ii. Lincoln rejects Crittenden proposals—no chance of compromise now
XII.
Fort Sumter (in South) attacked in South Carolina on April 12-13, 1861 by ConfederatesWAR